"More than 96% of respondents to the latest Wall Street Journal survey of 64 economists–not all of whom answered every question–said China’s gross-domestic-product estimates don’t accurately reflect the state of the world’s second-biggest economy.
“Official data are manufactured to fit the government’s narrative,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities."
The veracity of China's economics reporting is wwidely questioned:
China’s recent economic weakness has revived questions about the quality of its economic data. Critics charged that official statistics overstated the economy’s growth and understated inflation in China’s economy. The recent complaints followed a long period of questioning whether China, a developing country and authoritarian state, has the institutional capacity and political will to publish accurate statistics. Because China is now the world’s second-largest economy, and is suffering from economic imbalances, the debate carries more weight than in the past.
> Likewise, why would it be valid to convert to USA currency? Why not measure year to year growth directly, from the perspective of China?
So provide some data from that viewpoint. It seems that you’re just making data up. e.g. What is your “During the worst year of the Cultural Revolution, China still managed to grow 8%.” claim based on?
Honestly, is this news? I have always been advised (and believed) that Chinese GDP growth figures were unreliable, consistently matching the desired government goal for growth.
I don't see it frequently in writing, but the majority of TV and podcast reporting from news sites has the disclaimer. And there's enough China bad articles out there that I feel like this is implicitly assumed.
Either way, no one trusts Chinese stats, including the Chinese public themselves, and the Chinese government most of all. The ability to collect accurate statistics when there's so many different development levels country-wide simply isn't there. For example, China doesn't use GDP internally, they use LKI, LiKeQiang Index which aggregates a value from measurable indicators like freight cargo volume, electric consumption, bank loans. There's also TSF, Total Social Financing. They can still be gamed, but physically (running empty trains), but much harder to fake via submitting fake excel sheets to central government. Chinese GDP is basically a back of the napkin estimate to appease foreign investors, it's also used to set growth targets instead of reflecting it. Most of the mainstream western reporting on Chinese GDP does not understand this. It's well understood among China watchers. The most comprehensive study on Chinese GDP so far, by CSIS, suggested China was under reporting their GDP.
As for stacked urns in Wuhan, the city is still under quarantine so urns would not be picked up. Also necessary to account for other sources of death. The article quotes 56K cremations in Q4 2019, so a few thousands urns especially as restock doesn't seem atypical. Like LKI, it's an useful oblique indicator, but should be considered in other context. If there's mass death, enough to measurably affect hysterical people in quarantine, it would be on Chinese social media which would leak to China watchers. There's many expats and Chinese people with VPNs, things that affect the public on a mass scale inevitably leaps over the firewall, it's not opaque like politburo politics. People need to stop looking at Chinese numbers and instead extrapolate from oblique indicators. When expats in China talk about things returning to normal, when Chinese diaspora aren't mourning about sick or dead family members en-mass, then you can assume that reflects ground reality.
I don't know how China collect its public health statistics, but its economics numbers have been extensively studied. And the consensus is that its official GDP growth figures were overstated historically (by as much as 67%), but had been mostly accurate post-1996.
> Perhaps this view might go mainstream with the looming recession?
Nobody, including Beijing, took China’s official statistics at face value. What’s novel in this work is the larger-than-expected magnitude of the error.
Chinese GDP is "made up" according to Li himself in an leaked memo in the mid 2000s. The context behind this statement is that Chinese GDP figures are irrelevant to the actual operations of the Chinese economy and calculated off low-effort and unreliable provincial measures to appease foreign audiences - the government understands the limitations of statistic reporting in China. They know any number derived would be largely meaningless, so here's some back of the napkin estimates for international audiences who clamor for it so much. Then people take it out of context and accuse manipulation or falsification when no one should take it seriously since garbage in garbage out. In addition to LKI, the government uses other internal measures like TSF (total social financing) [1] while ignoring the GDP to gauge economic health.
As for foreign commentaries and studies on Chinese GDP, they're as unreliable as the Chinese figures themselves because the data simply isn't there. The most rigorous western analysis of Chinese GDP I'm aware of was conducted by CSIS who comprehensively reverse engineered Chinese GDP reporting from ground up, sector by sector using a variety of official sources, and concluded China is (1 trillion USD) larger than official numbers purported to be: Broken Abacus? A More Accurate Gauge of China's Economy [2].
That's not to say it's anymore an accurate reflection of ground truths, but at least it tries to reconstruct from the bottom up. Unless people believe the Chinese government expends vast resources manipulating every bit of data to comport to their GDP estimates which by all accounts they don't even care about.
Don't trust Chinese statistics. They are manipulated to say whatever the government wants them to say. This is the same country that starting running empty production facilities so economists couldn't predict GDP impacts.
Another somewhat popular or not so popular opinion is that China reports gdp numbers lower than what they actually have. I don't know what to believe but putting it out there for discussion.
And did you forget China is about to be hit with tariffs from US on 200B worth, soon to be 500B? when their economy is export oriented?
> Investments both internally and internationally are up
Wrong. Yuan has lost 12% this year. Chinese stock market has crashed 30% this year. That's not a sign of increasing FDI. that's FDI leaving and screaming
> On top of that they haven’t touched retirement age
Wrong. Chinese demographics looks horrible, and will reach peak in 2025. Their population will shrink 1/3 in the next 60 years.
"More than 96% of respondents to the latest Wall Street Journal survey of 64 economists–not all of whom answered every question–said China’s gross-domestic-product estimates don’t accurately reflect the state of the world’s second-biggest economy.
“Official data are manufactured to fit the government’s narrative,” said Stephen Stanley, chief economist at Amherst Pierpont Securities."
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