Economy
October 24, 2014
China’s Economic Statistics Q3 2014
Written by Peter Wright
Statistical data out of China is always questioned for a number of reasons, not least is, “Is the data politically motivated.” Other suspicions arise because China gets their data out faster than any other major economy and the data is never revised.
Figure 1 shows published data for the growth of GDP, industrial production and consumer prices through the Q3 of 2014. The GDP and industrial production portions of this graph are three month moving averages. GDP grew 7.3 percent y/y in the third quarter and has been declining since Q1 2010. An increasing number of analysts are now beginning to state publicly that they don’t believe the official economic statistics and the GDP growth is more likely in the 4 percent range. The growth of industrial production year over year increased in September to 8.0 percent from 6.9 percent in August but the three month moving average shown in Figure 1 continued to decline.
