Official data show that China's GDP grew 7.4 percent year on year in the first quarter, 0.3 percentage point lower than the pace in the previous three months.

No sooner did Chinese statistical authorities release the figures than some merchants of doom pointed at the slowdown and whipped up a new round of gloom-mongering over the future of the world's second largest economy.

But their claims that China's economic impetus is fizzling out and that the Asian giant is headed for an economic hard-landing are baseless and misleading.