China Research

¤ Some striking statistics

Currently, Chinese authorities publish an increasing number of (preliminary) economic and social statistics (to the extent that specific statistical time series exist at all – which many times is not the case compared to the statistical variety in developed OECD countries). In the past few years, I have been writing a number of papers and articles on the lagging quality of Chinese statistics – but I have also called for humility since China is such a big country that cannot achieve improvements rapidly and certainly not new time series within a short period of time. However, humility should not induce that certain existing official statistics sometimes appear strange or surprising (or that certain sensitive statistics are not published). Below, I give some examples.

GDP: China’s GDP grew by 7.4 percent in 2014. Some downsizing should be not particularly remarkable when looking just at the average for the whole year. But what about the following quarterly GDP increases in 2014, yoy: q1: 7.4, q2: 7.5, q3:7.3, q4: 7.3 percent? Such an even development is unusual in our part of the world. And in 2013, for example, it was almost the same phenomenon (q1:7.8, q2: 7.5, q3: 7.9, q4: 7.6). Where is the – in other countries – usual volatility of GDP-growth rates?

GDP aggregates: Publication of GDP aggregates is – in my eyes – still insufficient. My own findings tell me that there is only a distinction in shares of total GDP for total final consumption expenditure, gross capital formation and net exports for goods and services. But I have never seem a special headline showing “private consumption”(which should be particularly interesting when analyzing China’s new objectives of economic policy). Please tell me if I have missed something!

GINI: This indicator for income inequality (income distribution) “improved” in 2014 to 0.469 from 0.473 the year before – but still above the warning level of 0.40 set by the UN. The uneven distribution of income has certainly been embarrassing for China’s leading politicians for quite some years. Thus, improvements of the GINI indicator must be regarded as important. But by as little as 0.004 index points? This statistical accuracy looks somewhat strange.

Unemployment: Looking, for example, at the migration number below may indicate that unemployment should be higher than the officially noted urban unemployment rate (4.1%). Since the rural population counts for almost half of the Chinese population, there is also an urgent need to achieve acceptable statistics on rural unemployment. However, improved methodology as regards unemployment statistics have been announced recently. What will be the result?

Very small annual changes: As can be observed by the following new statistical numbers for 2014, changes from 2013 to 2014 are often very limited. Too limited?

¤ Some interesting official statistics for 2014

¤ Population: 1.37 billion (1,37 miljarder in Swedish); of which 54.8 % urban and 45.2 % rural population; of which 51.2 % male and 48.8 % female citizens; 138 million 65 years or older (2013: 132 million)

¤ GDP aggregates (share of GDP): total consumption 51.2 %, investment 48.6, net exports: 0.2 %

¤ Employment: 773 million (urban 393 million; total 2013: 770 million); migrant workers: 274 million citizens

¤ Shares of production: primary sector 9.2 % (2013: 10.0%), secondary sector 42.6 % (2013: 43.9%), tertiary sector 48.2 % (2013: 46.1%, for the first time larger than the secondary sector)

¤ Consumer Price Index (average): 2.0 % (of which urban inflation 2.1%, rural inflation 1.8 %; 2013 average 2.6%)

¤ Foreign exchange reserves (year end : 3 843 billion USD; 2013 year end: 3821 billion)

¤ Retail sales of consumer goods: 26 239 billion yuan (+10.9 % in volume terms ); of which online sales : 2 790 billion (+49,7 %)

¤ Internet users: 649 million (of which 557 million mobile internet users; total internet coverage 47.9 %)

¤ Real disposable income: + 8.0 % (2013: 8.1)

¤ Research & Development: 2.1 % of GDP (2013: 2.1%)

 

Hubert Fromlet
Senior Professor of International Economics, Linnaeus University
Editorial board

 

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