How Is China’s Economy Doing? Not Nearly as Well as China Says It Is
An independent tally of 2023 growth might accept Beijing’s official figures of 5% consumption growth as of the third quarter, but the other components of GDP remain flat or negative: government spending, net exports and business investment. Taken together, depending on how negative property investment is assumed to have been in 2023, China’s 2023 GDP probably grew 0 to 2.5%.
This slower growth estimate is far out of whack with the official figures endorsed by Beijing and the IMF, but is far easier to reconcile with the anecdotal evidence this year:
- Localities cutting bus service and street lighting
- Unexplained alteration of statistics to inflate apparent growth
- Suppression of data series telling a bleak story
- Negative foreign direct investment for the first time in modern history
- Price deflation
- Emergency expansion of fiscal deficit despite reporting solid growth
- Further takeover of private developers
- Net collection of debt repayment from Belt and Road Initiative countries rather than new official development assistance
- Persistent effort to fix the value of the renminbi stronger against the dollar all year
- Among the worst-performing major stock markets of the year
- Strong reported and unreported capital outflows
- The lowest marriage and birth rates on record
China restarts COVID-19 testing in hospitals, airports
Official directives highlight the coronavirus as one of several respiratory illnesses ripping through the country.
Now, government documents are starting to warn about a new wave of coronavirus infections in particular, with the State Council ordering local authorities to resume testing and disease monitoring.
h/t mark000