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China's GDP Growth Pace Was Inflated for Nine Years, Study Finds

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Re: China's GDP Growth Pace Was Inflated for Nine Years, Study Finds

#31

Post by contingencies »

resters wrote: post #16

Consider that Fannie and Freddie were allowed not to provide detailed financials to congress for several years in a row preceding the 2008 housing collapse. It's not a matter of "oh wow, a major government fudges numbers", it's "how many major ways in which my government fudges numbers might I not be aware of?"

As an outside observer, another example would be the constant redefinition of US unemployment (I hear it is now "people who haven't actively sought work for 3 months are no longer considered unemployed") which IIRC from an article has dropped US unemployment figures. It sounds like reality may differ substantially, and there is certainly a huge underground/cash economy.

Re: China's GDP Growth Pace Was Inflated for Nine Years, Study Finds

#32

Post by povertyworld »

ggm wrote: post #14

The article states that the provinces have a material reason to inflate. The provincial governments are far stronger than people routinely seem to understand, we're obsessed by the strong statist arguments of 'scary China' and don't think about their internal structure and where strength and weakness lies. I believe Chinese central planners don't like misleading numbers, it makes the five year plan much harder to des…

In college I remember a professor saying something similar caused problems during the Great Leap Forward. The local cadres were overestimating their production numbers so the central government exported rice to Albania or other allies thinking they had a surplus when in fact there was a shortage. I'm sure that wasn't the only reason there were problems at the time, but it didn't help.

Re: China's GDP Growth Pace Was Inflated for Nine Years, Study Finds

#33

Post by digitaltrees »

resters wrote: post #29
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fannie and Freddie were allowed not to submit financials to markets for several years in a row preceding the 2008 housing collapse Source? I’m searching and can’t find one. I also remember reading Fannie & Freddie prospectuses from that time. Each contained extensive financial disclosures.

Information was omitted: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/03/business/dealbook/why-no-...

This article doesn’t support your original claim at all.

Re: China's GDP Growth Pace Was Inflated for Nine Years, Study Finds

#34

Post by kasey_junk »

contingencies wrote: post #31
resters wrote: post #16

Consider that Fannie and Freddie were allowed not to provide detailed financials to congress for several years in a row preceding the 2008 housing collapse. It's not a matter of "oh wow, a major government fudges numbers", it's "how many major ways in which my government fudges numbers might I not be aware of?"

As an outside observer, another example would be the constant redefinition of US unemployment (I hear it is now "people who haven't actively sought work for 3 months are no longer considered unemployed") which IIRC from an article has dropped US unemployment figures. It sounds like reality may differ substantially, and there is certainly a huge underground/cash economy.

The US BLS has long kept many different measures of unemployment.

All of these numbers are watched to extreme degrees by market participants. The idea that they are constantly redefined doesn’t hold up to basic analysis by anyone who has traded on that data.

Re: China's GDP Growth Pace Was Inflated for Nine Years, Study Finds

#35

Post by abvdasker »

resters wrote: post #16

Consider that Fannie and Freddie were allowed not to provide detailed financials to congress for several years in a row preceding the 2008 housing collapse. It's not a matter of "oh wow, a major government fudges numbers", it's "how many major ways in which my government fudges numbers might I not be aware of?"

Not going to dispute the facts of this comment, but to me this sounds like whataboutism, wherein the commenter tries to neutralize criticism by creating an equivalency with other entities which might be worthy of the same criticism. It's a rhetorical strategy that seems to come up a lot on the internet, especially when the CCP is the subject.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Re: China's GDP Growth Pace Was Inflated for Nine Years, Study Finds

#36

Post by ggm »

mc32 wrote: post #24
ggm wrote: post #14

The article states that the provinces have a material reason to inflate. The provincial governments are far stronger than people routinely seem to understand, we're obsessed by the strong statist arguments of 'scary China' and don't think about their internal structure and where strength and weakness lies. I believe Chinese central planners don't like misleading numbers, it makes the five year plan much harder to des…

I would decouple the economic and political realities of “the mountains are tall and the emperor far away” from national military might. Vietnam, Russia, Tibet and other neighbors can attest that that one is not like the other.

Possibly, yes. The article I responded to focused on the economy. Do you see signs of Chinese territorial ambition, spratleys aside?

Re: China's GDP Growth Pace Was Inflated for Nine Years, Study Finds

#38

Post by headsupftw »

learc83 wrote: post #30

Can we do something about every article remotely ctitical of China being flagged. I'm assuming that's what happened since this article very quickly moved from 1st place to below other articles that are older and have far fewer comments and upvotes. Edit: currently #21 despite more upvotes and comments and being newer than the top 3 articles.

It's actually the opposite. Every comment not critical of China gets downvoted quickly. Proof: comments on this article and other articles critical of China, remotely or overtly.

Re: China's GDP Growth Pace Was Inflated for Nine Years, Study Finds

#39

Post by dis-sys »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #4

Not surprising at all, the government is uncannily accurate in their prediction (growth will be 6.9% this year, at the end of the year: hey look, we did it!). Kind of like how almost every province usually has a 4.0% unemployment rate. That isn't to say China's GDP hasn't been growing, just that the numbers are always being fudged one way or the other. They used to even fudge the numbers down (growth higher than repo…

> It is ironic that Li Keqiang is premiere (#2) but Xi Jinping has decided not to use his index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Keqiang_index) that gets around fudging with more accurate statistics.

Li Keqiang Index has three components, electricity consumption, railway cargo volume and bank loans. They all had pretty good growth, e.g.

https://www.caixinglobal.com/2018-12-06/china-railway-corp-s...

https://www.caixinglobal.com/2019-01-30/chart-of-the-day-chi...

People need to be realistic, China's current GDP per capita is lower than world's average, it is an extremely poor country totally under developed. With the largest domestic market and hard working population, how hard will it be to grow at 6-7% to catch up with some in the middle of nowhere countries with $20k USD GDP per capita?

Re: China's GDP Growth Pace Was Inflated for Nine Years, Study Finds

#40

Post by dang »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #8

Unfortunately, this is a cultural issue with China. Anyone who has had any involvement with academia or research, where cheating is easily detectable, has known this.

Please keep nationalistic flamebait away from HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

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