

China’s growth figures fail to add up - tokenadult
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0ec404fc-8120-11de-92e7-00144feabdc0.html

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smanek
Sun Tzu: Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though
effective, appear to be ineffective. [...] Feign inferiority and encourage his
arrogance.

Either that, or provinces tend to over-report growth to make themselves look
good so Beijing corrects reported numbers downward.

~~~
brk
Did Sun Tzu say anything about child labor and leeching contaminants into the
local water supply?

~~~
californiaguy
I don't know, did Benjamin Franklin?

<http://www.epa.gov/superfund/>

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tokenadult
"Even state-controlled media reports and editorials have in recent days raised
questions over their accuracy.

"The Global Times, controlled by the People’s Daily, the Communist party
mouthpiece, reported that the public reacted with 'banter and sarcasm' to NBS
figures showing average urban wages in China rose 13 per cent in the first
half to $2,142.

"It quoted an online poll showing 88 per cent of respondents doubted the
official numbers."

When state-controlled media can post stories critical of other state agencies,
that's a pretty good indicator of eroding trust.

~~~
seldo
Or possibly emerging freedoms.

~~~
tokenadult
_possibly emerging freedoms_

I hope so. Things looked that way in 1989.

~~~
papersmith
I wouldn't say the protest was without fruit. Much of the economic progress of
the 90s owe to the government trying to please an impoverished population.
Empty stomach sits at the root of much political changes in history,
ideologies ride the hunger waves.

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est
I don't know much about econmics, but here's an explaination on the Internet
for last year's similar news:

'province' is political region, and you can't simply 'add up' those provice
GDP figures because many of Chinese companies are inter-provincial. Each
provincial officials will try their best to make the figure look large, but
the central government has to eliminate duplicate ones.

The real question is why the gap 15,376bn-13,986bn=1390bn is so huge?

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Seiwynd
I'm confused ... so National Government percentage < actual assumed
percentage?

If so, what benefit could there be to that? I can understand inflating figures
to make oneself sound better, but I don't really get why you would report
smaller numbers.

~~~
tokenadult
As I read the article with my background in sinology, what appears to be
reported here is that China has some actual level of economic growth, which I
will call X. The central government, desiring to look good to the common
people, reports a level of economic growth X+N. One clue that the central
government statistics are dubious is that provincial governments report
figures that would imply a level of X+N+M (all numbers are positive numbers),
yet the central government doesn't aggregate the provincial figures, implying
that the provincial governments desire to look good to the central government.
Another clue that the central government statistics are dubious is that online
discussion of those statistics expresses open doubt, even in a country with
much state control of all mass media.

Does this look like a fair summary of the article's claims? They seem
plausible to me.

~~~
Seiwynd
Oh right. I feel stupid now, I assumed the provincial figures were accurate,
but it makes much more sense that those numbers are doctored to try and please
the central governement. Thanks for the explanation.

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miked
I no longer have the link, but a few years ago I read critiques of Chinese
government economic statistics based on a comparison of electricity demand
versus gov stats. Quite a discrepancy, as the electricity demand was much
lower that the growth stats would predict.

My problem with the stats is that, while I can easily believe the cities are
growing at 8%, most Chinese still live in the countryside, and it still quite
poor, albeit not as poor as it once was. My uncle-in-law supports his family
by farming strawberries on 2 mu of land, roughly an acre or so. That acre's
not growing at 8% a year, and they're still using the same fertilizer they
always have -- human feces.

