In light of President Donald Trump\u2019s firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner last week, some are looking to China to know how exactly does one operate in an economy where the numbers from the government can\u2019t be trusted. <\/p>\n
When Zongyuan Zoe Liu at the Council on Foreign Relations heard the news about the BLS commissioner getting canned, it felt familiar.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first impression was, oh, this comes to me as a convergence between the United States and China,\u201d Liu said. \u201cThat was literally the first thought I had.\u201d<\/p>\n
So maybe America and China aren\u2019t so different after all?\u00a0<\/p>\n
Liu said nobody really believes China\u2019s National Bureau of Statistics when it says Chinese GDP grew over 5% <\/strong>last quarter.<\/p>\n China watchers like her look for data from third parties that are proxies for economic activity, like freight volumes. <\/p>\n \u201cIf economic activities are of a high level, then you would anticipate trucks are moving around,\u201d Liu said.<\/p>\n Investors and economists also look to data on electricity use or nighttime light or heat emissions from satellite imagery.<\/p>\n Scott Kennedy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said retailers who are deciding whether to open a new storefront in China don\u2019t really consult government stats.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are marketing firms, domestic Chinese firms, some foreign firms in China that do market research,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cThey do their own surveys of consumers.\u201d<\/p>\n But that system is by no means perfect. Sure, the Chinese economy has grown dramatically the past few decades, but Derek Scissors at the American Enterprise Institute says the lack of good government data has nevertheless hurt Chinese businesses.<\/p>\n \u201cFirms can’t tell what’s going on,\u201d Scissors said. \u201cThey look at official data and say, \u2018Should we get into this industry? I can’t tell.\u2019 And then they make bad decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s also important to remember here, nobody has ever really trusted the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s statistics, and Chinese markets have learned to adapt.<\/p>\n Scissors said U.S. businesses have come to depend on good government data, and he worries whether politics might infect more than just the jobs report.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we’re moving into an era where official statistics are unreliable, that’s a huge shock the Chinese economy never had,\u201d said Scissors.<\/p>\n Because they never had reliable stats to begin with.<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In light of President Donald Trump\u2019s firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner last week, some are…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":120388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[13635,64,74,79,74872,15777,72753,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-120387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-bureau-of-labor-statistics","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-china","11":"tag-economy","12":"tag-government-data","13":"tag-statistics","14":"tag-u-s-government","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114975182927840648","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}