(Yicai Global) Dec. 26 -- China needs to slow down its economic growth to ensure the costs of development don't spiral out of control, Xu Xianchun, former deputy head of the National Bureau of Statistics, said at a recent forum.

China's dated high growth model needs to be adapted to realistic constraints, Xu said, noting that in the country's current state, natural resources, environmental limitations and the shrinking working-age population lead to disproportionately high development costs.

The blind pursuit of rapid growth will result in a series of issues, such as ineffective investment, over-investment and excessive financial leverage, he added.

Despite being the world's second-largest economy, China's gross domestic product grew at an average rate of 7.3 percent from 2012 through 2016. The largest economy, the US, grew at an average of less than 2.2 percent over the same period.

The debt-to-gross domestic product and debt-to-asset ratios at China's industrial enterprises have been on the decline in recent years, Xu said. But aside from debts, the country needs to concentrate on asset quality in the real economy, which is the root of the problem. Improving investments, the efficiency of economic growth and the quality of bonds' underlying assets is at the core of financial deleveraging, he continued.

The NBS will create a national balance sheet by the end of next year and compile information from local governments by 2020, Xu added. The bureau will publicly release the methodology behind the compilation in due course. China still has many core issues, such as balance sheet coverage, asset and liability evaluations and data sourcing, he said.