Revisiting Some Past Posts On Chinese Data

In class on 1/14 some of the discussion about the estimated costs of the "green new deal" proposal moved in the direction of questioning the accuracy of data coming out of China.

I noted that I put in better search capabilities into SUU Macroblog this past summer. It should now be easier to find past posts related to interests of current students. Accuracy of Chinese data has been something I've been touching on in this class for several years now.

First off, now that you have the Handbook, given this classroom discussion, it wouldn't hurt to read pp. 110-117 first. It's not the order I prefer, but I don't think there's much background in the first 110 pages to prevent us from moving that up (and BTW, that section was developed out of one of the older blog posts linked below).

I got most of these just by putting "china gdp" into the the search bar in SUU Macroblog. I've pulled the posts from the top of that search that seemed most apropos.

• From 2019 there's "China Minus a Japan and a Germany and a France, Give or Take" is speculative. It argues that the two big mismeasurements of China's economy that are in the literature probably don't cancel each other out, but rather should probably be compounded. This suggests that China's economy might be less than half the size of the official numbers.

Of course, there may be entities in other countries and the U.S. with a vested interest in overstating the size of China:

• From 2011 there's "China is # 2",  from 2016 there's "What Should We Be Worrying About in China (and India Too)?", and from 2012 there's "China's Data Problems". I'm not advocating that we throw out the numbers entirely, but rather that we need to be thinking early and often about how big a cushion seems reasonable. China is definitely a big economy: if their estimates are too high by even 10%, we're talking about a discrepancy the size of Russia's entire economy.
• It's worthwhile noting in passing that employees of statistical agencies in many less developed countries have been subject to criminal penalties and even exile for not producing numbers more to politicians liking.

There is a consulting group that measures accuracy of national income data. It's called World Economics, and they publish a Data Quality Index (they also reserve China for special discussion above and beyond the general discussion applied to many countries. 

• From 2018 there's "Problems with Other Countries' GDP Data" (the basis for pp. 111-2 in the Handbook), from 2015 there's "China's Real GDP Growth Rate", and also "How Worried Should We Be About China", all of which paint a picture of the Chinese economy that is not particularly good.

None of this should be construed as "picking on" China on my part. If China is big (or claims to be) it should get proportionally more media attention. The increased attention has turned up a lot of issues over the last 10 years.