1月13日，中共北京市委的机关报"北京日报"
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短短的几周内，
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Economists at odds over reliability of China data
Ask a Chinese official about the prospects for the economy this year and the response will be short and crisp – “8 per cent”. Some aim a touch higher, while a few others talk vaguely of risks. But none departs from the party line of uninterrupted high growth.
The target of 8 per cent is to assure Chinese citizens that the authorities have the situation firmly under control. Yet given the obvious and sharp slowdown in the economy in recent months, this confident prediction has reopened a debate about the credibility of Beijing's growth statistics.
Since China's ability to weather the international financial crisis will help determine the depth of the global recession, investors all over the world are asking whether they can rely on official statements about the performance of the economy.
Few economists doubt the underlying trend of high growth in recent decades in China, but many believe that the authorities play down the volatility of the economy – under-reporting growth in boom periods and over-reporting in the years when activity is weak.
The suspicion was underlined yesterday when the Chinese statistics bureau announced that growth in 2007 had been revised up to 13 per cent from 11.9 per cent – the second significant revision of the gross domestic product figures for that year. The reliability of statistics will be at the fore again next week when last year's fourth quarter GDP figures are released, a period for which most indicators suggest there was a rapid slowdown.
Arthur Kroeber, editor of China Economic Quarterly, likens the situation to the way that some companies use flexibility in accounting rules to smooth out their earnings. “There is a clear pattern of massaging the growth figures,” he says. “The political incentives to manage the numbers at different levels of government are very powerful.”
Chinese statistics came under intense international scrutiny after the last prolonged slowdown, which followed the Asian financial crisis in 1997-98. While most of the region was mired in recession, Beijing said the economy grew by an impressive 7.8 per cent in 1998.
That claim was disputed by Thomas Rawski, an economist at the University of Pittsburgh, who used other Chinese data to conclude that growth was no higher than 2 per cent in that year and remained weak until 2001.
Between 1997 and 2000, he said, energy consumption dropped 12.8 per cent, while in 1997-98 domestic air travel rose only 2.2 per cent. The official numbers “defy economic logic”, he wrote, and added that Chinese economists even had a phrase for the manipulation of official statistics – jiabao fukuafeng, or “wind of falsification and embellishment”.
Since then several academics have posed questions about the robustness of the GDP numbers: Carsten Holz at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology said they should be “taken with a rock of salt”. Yet few are as pessimistic as Mr Rawski about growth in 1998, which many private economists put at about 5 per cent.
Two years ago, when the Chinese statistics bureau revised upwards growth figures for 1993-2004 to reflect better the expansion in the services sector, the result for 1998 was left unchanged – which some took as a tacit admission that the figure had been exaggerated.
However, some experts on the Chinese economy stand by the official numbers. Nicholas Lardy at the Peterson Institute in Washington says the strong increase in imports and tax revenues in the late 1990s indicates that growth was not that sluggish.
“There are so many different sources of information about the Chinese economy that it is hard to manipulate the growth figures that much,” he says.
Given the sharp slowdown in the economy since the autumn and renewed scrutiny of official growth numbers, Standard Chartered has created a composite of proxies to try to measure activity – industrial production, imports, freight traffic and bank credit.
The index, which suggests that official growth figures were exaggerated in the late 1990s, fell to its lowest level since 1994 at the end of last year – indicating that fourth quarter GDP was very weak.
Stephen Green, economist at Standard Chartered in Shanghai, says “the authorities might be persuaded to massage up the official figures” if they were too bleak. However, he adds that a low figure for fourth quarter GDP would then make it easier to achieve 8 per cent growth in 2009.
如果向某个中国官员询问今年中国的经济前景，得到的回答将是简短而干脆的：“8%”。有些官员还会给出略高一点的目标，虽然少数几个也会含糊地提到各种风险，但都不会偏离中国共产党“持续快速增长”的基调。 百分之八的目标是为了让中国民众确信，当局牢固地掌控着经济形势。但是，由于最近几个月来经济增长明显大幅放缓，这种充满信心的预测使得中国政府公布的增长数据的可靠性，再度成为争论的对象。 中国抵御国际金融危机的能力，将有助于决定全球经济衰退的严重程度。因此，世界各地的投资者都在关心：关于中国经济表现的官方报告是否可靠？
鲜有经济学家怀疑近几十年来中国高增长的基本趋势，但很多人认为中国当局淡化了经济的波动性——在经济繁荣时期低报增长率，而在经济活力减弱的年份高报经济增长率。 这种怀疑在昨天再次凸显：中国国家统计局宣布，将2007年中国经济的增长率从11.9%修正为13%，。这是北京方面第二次对2007年的GDP 数据进行重大修正。下周，统计数据的可靠性问题将再次摆在人们面前：届时将公布2008年第四季度的GDP数据。大多数指标显示，这一时期的经济增长迅速 减缓。 《中国经济季刊》(China Economic Quarterly)主编葛艺豪(Arthur Kroeber)指出，这种情况就像有些公司利用会计规则的灵活性，消除收益出现的波动。他表示：“在增长数据上做手脚的模式是明显的。各级政府出于政治 考虑而操控数据的动机十分强大。” 上一次中国经济出现长期减速是在1997年至1998年的亚洲金融危机之后。1998年，在亚洲大多数地区陷入衰退泥淖之时，北京报告称经济增长率达到令人侧目的7.8%。此后，中国的统计数据就受到严密的国际审视。 美国匹兹堡大学(University of Pittsburgh)经济学家托马斯•罗斯基(Thomas Rawski)对上述数据提出质疑，他运用中国其它方面的数据得出结论，称1998年中国经济增长不会超过2%，且到2001年为止一直持续疲软。 他表示，1997年至2000年间，中国的能源消耗减少了12.8%；而1997年至1998年间，中国国内航空客运仅增长了2.2%。他指出，中国官方的数据“与经济规律不符”，并补充道，中国的经济学专家甚至有一个专门的词汇来形容对官方数据的操纵：“假报浮夸风”。 从那之后，有数位学者对中国GDP的强劲数字提出质疑。香港科技大学的卡斯顿•霍兹(Carsten Holz)称应该对这些数据“有所保留”。不过，对于中国1998年的增长率，很少有人像罗斯基那样悲观，很多非官方的经济学家认为该年增长率应在5%左右。 两年前，中国国家统计局上调了1993至2004年间的数据，以更好地反映服务业的增长。而当时1998年的统计结果未被修订。有些人认为，这是在默认1998年的数据有所夸大。 不过，也有一些中国经济专家支持官方数字。美国华盛顿彼得森研究所(Peterson Institute)的尼古拉斯•拉迪(Nicholas Lardy)称，上世纪90年代后期中国进口和税收的大幅增长表明，经济增长并不是那么无力。 “中国经济的信息来源太多了，增长数字是很难被如此大幅度地操纵的。”他表示。 由于去年秋季以来经济增长明显放缓，以及国际上对中国公布的官方增长数据重新严加审查，渣打银行(Standard Chartered)制定了一个由工业产值、进口规模、货运量和银行信贷等替代指标构成的综合指数，试图借此衡量经济活动。 这一指数显示，上世纪90年代后期的官方增长数据有所夸大。2008年末该指数跌至1994年以来的最低水平，说明第四季度GDP增长十分缓慢。 渣打银行驻上海经济学家王志浩(Stephen Green)表示，如果数字过于惨谈，“中国当局或许会被迫调高官方数据”。但他同时表示，若2008年第四季度的数字较低，实现2009年经济增长8%的目标就会变得比较容易。
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