Why does China overvalue its GDP?
National Interest:
by Salvatore Babones
Key point: Shave off a little growth every year for the last dozen years ago, and the cumulative effect is that China is now overstating its true GDP by nearly 20 percent.
China’s economy isn’t what it used to be (at least as recently as last week). Four intrepid economists—Wei Chen, Xilu Chen and Michael Song of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, along with Chang-Tai Hsieh of the University of Chicago—have taken a fine-toothed comb to Chinese economic data to try to tease out China’s true rate of economic growth since 2008. Not surprisingly, they found that China has been over-reporting its growth rate by an average of 1.7 percentage points every year.
Shave off a little growth every year for the last dozen years ago, and the cumulative effect is that China is now overstating its true GDP by nearly 20 percent.
The four economists’ “forensic examination” of China’s GDP figures relied on hard-to-fake data like tax receipts, nighttime light intensity observed from satellites, electricity generation, railway cargo and merchandise exports to estimate China’s true growth rate since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Their estimates are both much more volatile and nearly always lower than the figures reported by China’s National Bureau of Statistics. read more
Communists lie? Who knew?
China’s economy always will be a joke because to much of it is Nationally Subsidized. Like ALL of their manufacturing
Their little commie peckers aren’t all that either
Well remember – Mao killed all the REAL economists, and put janitors in charge of that. 🙄
They are finally taking care of their smog problem though – killing it with coronavirus!
It’s really a catch 22 because we know that commie economies numbers can’t be trusted and they hide a lot of the rot.
But at the same time, they ARE accumulating wealth. And the US is depleting it’s wealth to satisfy the war mongers on the right and the sjw on the left. We are destroying our wealth and the Chinese are accumulating wealth. And that is a fact. Might as well not hide our heads in the sand.
@Sonny Beach –
Short version: The Chi-Coms are accumulating OUR wealth.
Sonny, Sonny, Sonny … define “wealth” please, so we’ll have some idea how we are destroying ours and the communist chinese are accumulating theirs.
izlamo delenda est …
I traveled to China in 2004. Went through a rural area where wheat is grown. The field was being manually plowed by a farmer with a plow an oxen. The wheat harvested wheat was spread out on tarps along the road so that vehicles passing by would help blow off the chaff (sp). Therer several weeks. I NEVER SAW EVEN A PATCH OF BLUE SKY. Bejing is filthy. Soot coats everything. AWFUL.
Reminds me of those recurring comparisons about how much more the US spends on the military than the chicoms,russians, iran etc. Of course numbers for the US buy are likely 90+% accurate, while the others are likely 9.8% accurate.
An interesting chart showing how countries around the world compare with US economically
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_between_U.S._states_and_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)
Just like their penises.
well their manufacturing is courtesy of the USA via bill clintons tax breaks to our manufacturers for relocating their production over there
China’s economy is smaller than they thought, because they assumed we’d never elect a real American for President, like Donald Trump!