The Hunt for China's Real GDP Growth Rate

choi

William Pesek, The Hunt for China's Real Growth Number. Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Mar 9, 2015.


Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Economists using "Li Index" find GDP growth is 5 percent
(b) At the bottom of the print report: The bottom line: China may not need to grow by 7 percent or 8 percent to generate enough jobs for a slowly expanding workforce.

(c)
(i) The article is actually recycled from

William Pesek, China May Be Stalling Out and That's OK. BloombergView, Feb 23, 2015
www.bloombergview.com/articles/2 ... y-not-spur-protests
("The consultancy Oxford Economics has created a 'Li Index' * * * Contrary to the official headline GDP number, those data suggest Chinese gross domestic product growth has been stumbling along under 5 percent for a few months now. * * * If Oxford is right, that means there may be a much lower threshold for preserving social stability in China than previously assumed. The consultancy’s explanation, while highly technical, boils down to this: China’s shrinking population and the slowing of migration to cities means there are enough jobs to go around, even as GDP growth also eases")

, which is translated from

William Pesek, 中国经济增长放缓 为何仍可能保障就业？ 香港南华早报, Feb 27, 2015.
www.nanzaozhinan.com/sc/li-cai-z ... ng-bao-zhang-jiu-ye
(ii) The only difference between the BusinessWeek (print) article and the BloombergView (online) one is the former contains a graphic of GDP growth rates from 1Q10 to the present (both official rates and Oxford Economics' estimates). The latter (Oxford's) shows in 1Q10 China's GDP growth rate was a whopping more than 20% (whereas the figure from National Bureau of Statistics was 11.9%), but that in recent quarters, China's economy has been growing roughly around 5%.

(d) Who We Are. Oxford Economics, undated
www.oxfordeconomics.com/about-us
("Oxford Economics was founded in 1981 as a commercial venture with Oxford University’s business college to provide economic forecasting and modelling * * * Headquartered in Oxford, England")