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by chlee
2465 days ago
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In addition, some analysts believe that China's official GDP growth numbers are overinflated, and the actual GDP growth is 1-2% lower than the official government data. for example, Li Keqiang, the current premier of China (the #2 guy behind Xi) measures a different set of numbers [1] to approximate China's GDP growth because he doesn't trust the official GDP figures due to inaccurate local government growth data. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Keqiang_index |
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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.
[1] http://www.chinabankingnews.com/total-social-financing/
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOxIJMjZOUo&