The API doesn't contain a container count method or property, so you'd need to do something like what you posted. However, you'll need to deal with NextMarker if you exceed 5,000 items returned (or if you specify max # to return and the list exceeds that number). Then you'll make add'l calls based on NextMarker and add the counts.
I tried counting blobs using ListBlobs() and for a container with about 400,000 items, it took me well over 5 minutes.
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