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And the problem -- for Beijing's economic planners anyway -- gets even worse when you dig down into the first-quarter numbers. The Beijing government not only wanted to slow the rate of economic growth from 2006's 10.7%, it wanted to shift the source of that growth away from the export-oriented industrial sector and toward the domestically oriented service sector.

That effort, so far, is failing dismally. Growth in factory output climbed 18.3% in the first quarter of 2007, even faster than growth in the economy as a whole. Those industries -- petrochemicals, coke-making, fuel processing and refining, and metal production and processing -- that consume the most energy grew at a 21% annual rate. And it looks like the steady decline in the service sector's share of the national economy -- to 39.5% in 2006 from 40.7% in 2004 -- will continue in 2007.

Commodities Won't Cool

So instead of seeing a slowing in production from export industries that consume a lot of imported oil, iron ore, copper and other raw materials, production from those industries actually went up in the first quarter and looks likely to grow at the same rate or slightly higher for all of 2007.

And companies -- along with overseas investors -- are putting more money into the kind of hard industrial and infrastructure investments that soak up even more of the global supply of these commodities. Urban fixed-asset investments -- things like roads, apartments and factories -- climbed 25% in the first quarter of 2007 from the first quarter of 2006. Investment in some commodity-consuming sectors is growing even faster: Investment in the cement and aluminum sectors climbed by 39.4% and 49.3%, respectively, in the first quarter of 2007 from the same quarter in 2006.