【英语财经】中国经济数据虚实难辨 China’s economic facts and fakes can be hard to tell apart

We have long grown accustomed to Chinese fakes. Fake watches. Fake DVDs. Even, recently, a fake Goldman Sachs. But what if something more fundamental were fake? What if China’s gross domestic product numbers were not all they were cracked up to be?

Many economists have long suspected precisely that. For one thing, China’s data for GDP growth have been suspiciously smooth. While most economies are subject to booms and busts, China’s has seemed to sail on regardless.

Another cause for doubt is that provincial figures and national data don’t always add up. Nor, often, do Chinese trade statistics matched against those of its trading partners. Such discrepancies are partly down to the sheer difficulty of measuring activity in such a vast country. Partly, though, they result from perverse incentives through which officials have been rewarded according to crude measures of growth.

While China’s economy was thundering along at breakneck speed none of this may have mattered too much. Whether it was expanding at 8 per cent or 10 per cent, the evidence of growth was all around: in construction, in migration to the booming cities and in the palpable improvement in people’s lives. Now that the economy is slowing — possibly dramatically — gauging the accuracy of GDP statistics matters rather more. If China is growing at 7 per cent, as Beijing claims, then, for all the recent market ructions, technocrats are pulling off a soft landing in the real economy even as they wean the country off investment-led growth.

If, on the other hand, China is slowing to 5 per cent or less, then hopes for a soft landing may be in vain. That could risk social unrest. Or it might persuade the authorities to crank out further stimulus measures, which would boost growth in the short term but store up longer-term problems in the form of unrepayable debt. Before we look at current growth, it is useful to delve into the past.

At the best of times, GDP is a pretty crude measure of economic activity, let alone human wellbeing. Much of China’s growth has resulted from converting young (unpaid) mothers into factory workers, coal in the ground into energy and pollution, and communal land into private property. China, with its legacy of central planning, is better at measuring crude industrial output than tertiary activity.

Work by Harry Wu, an economist at The Conference Board, an independent research institute, concludes that, from 1978-2012, China grew at 7.2 per cent a year. While that is spectacularly fast, it is 2.6 percentage points below the official 9.8 per cent estimate. Mr Wu finds that China overstates productivity growth and underestimates inflation, measured by something called the GDP deflator. If the deflator is understated, “real” growth, adjusted for inflation, will be overstated. Mr Wu also finds that authorities exaggerate growth in bad times and play down the impact of external shocks. According to his estimates — which build on methods he helped develop with the late Angus Maddison — China grew at 4.7 per cent in 2008 versus the official estimate of 9.6 per cent and just 4.1 per cent in 2012 compared with an official 9.7 per cent.

So what of the present? Capital Economics is one of several research outfits to take its cue from Li Keqiang, now premier, who in 2007 said that, rather than trusting GDP, one should look at electricity, rail cargo and bank loans. Capital uses an “activity proxy” comprising freight movement, sea shipments, electricity use, property sales and passenger travel. Those numbers are measured by volume and thus are not subject to dubious price estimates. According to this proxy index, growth in the second quarter was running at 4.3 per cent, far lower than the official estimate of 7 per cent. There is a wrinkle, however. Julian Evans-Pritchard, chief economist at Capital, concedes that the proxy index fails to capture sufficient activity in the service sector, where much of China’s growth is to be found these days. As a result, he says, growth is probably somewhere between the proxy index and the official number.

Nicholas Lardy, from the Peterson Institute for International Economics, takes this argument further. Economists, he says, have mostly failed to appreciate the dynamism in China’s service sector, which now accounts for nearly half of GDP. Much of this is not reflected in data. Mr Lardy reckons there is little reason to suspect China has slowed below the official 7 per cent. In this time of pessimism, it is a bold claim.

Crucially, it depends on the view that China’s economic centre of gravity has shifted from generally state-owned manufacturing to generally privately owned services. Such a shift is precisely what China needs. If he is anything like right, there may be a silver lining in the increasingly grim numbers.

我们早已习惯了中国制造的各种假货。冒牌手表、盗版DVD，最近甚至出现了一家假冒的高盛(Goldman Sachs)。但如果一些更基本的东西也是假的，那会怎样？如果中国国内生产总值(GDP)数据根本不像被吹嘘的那么高，结果会怎样？

许多经济学家长期以来一直有这种怀疑。一方面，中国GDP数据一直保持着可疑的平稳增长状态。当大多数经济体都经历着繁荣和萧条的交替时，中国经济似乎从未停下前进的脚步。

另一个引发质疑的原因是，各省GDP数据相加之和并不总是与全国GDP相符。中国的贸易统计数据也常常与其贸易伙伴的数据不相匹配。此类差异可以部分归因于在如此幅员辽阔的国家计量各种经济活动的巨大难度。而另一部分原因在于中国扭曲的激励机制——根据经济增长的粗略统计来奖惩官员。

当中国经济以极快的速度隆隆前进时，这些问题都不太要紧。过去，不论增速是8%还是10%，到处都是增长的证据：如火如荼的各项建设、涌入蓬勃发展的大城市的大量人口、人民生活水平的明显改善。如今，中国经济正在放缓，而且可能是急剧放缓，这就使测算GDP数据的精确性显得更加重要。如果中国经济正以北京方面所声称的7%的速度增长，那么，尽管市场近期多有抱怨，但中国的技术官僚确实正在实现实体经济的软着陆，并且是在他们让中国戒断投资导向型增长模式的同时。

但如果中国经济增速正在放缓至5%或更低的话，那么，软着陆的愿望可能会落空。这将有可能引发社会动荡。或者，可能迫使中国当局仓促出台进一步的刺激措施，这会在短期内提振经济增长，但会积累下更长期的问题——无法偿清的债务。在我们审视中国当前的经济增长之前，深入研究一下过去是有帮助的。

即使在最好的情况下，GDP也只是对经济活动的一项相当粗略的估量，更不用说用来衡量人民的福祉。中国经济增长的大部分来自于将年轻（没有收入）的母亲转变成工厂工人、将地下的煤炭转化为能源和污染，以及将公共土地转化为私人财产。拥有中央计划经济传统的中国，更善于粗略计量工业（而非第三产业）产出。

独立研究机构大企业联合会(The Conference Board)经济学家伍晓鹰(Harry Wu)的研究得出的结论是：从1978至2012年，中国经济年均增长7.2%。虽然这已经快得惊人，但比中国官方估计的9.8%低了2.6个百分点。伍晓鹰发现，中国高估了生产率增长而低估了通胀（用所谓的GDP平减指数来衡量）。如果GDP平减指数被低估，经通胀调整后的“实际”增长会被高估。伍晓鹰还发现，中国当局在经济不景气时夸大增长，并淡化外部冲击的影响。基于他帮助已故经济史学家安格斯?麦迪森(Angus Maddison)所建立的模型，伍晓鹰估计，中国2008年的经济增速为4.7%，而官方估值为9.6%；2012年仅为4.1%，而官方数字为7.7%。

那么现在呢？凯投宏观(Capital Economics)是从现任中国总理李克强2007年的讲话中得到启示的几家研究机构之一。当时李克强称，人们不应该相信GDP，而是应该参考用电量、铁路货运量及银行贷款发放量。凯投宏观参考的是由货运、海运、用电量、房地产销量及旅客流量组成的“经济活动代理”指数。这些数字均以量来衡量，因此不受不可靠的价格估计的影响。根据该代理指数，第二季度中国经济增长4.3%，远低于官方估算的7%。不过，该指数也有一个缺点。凯投宏观的首席经济学家朱利安?埃文斯-普里查德(Julian Evans-Pritchard)承认该指数未能反映足够的服务业活动，而如今服务业对中国经济增长的贡献很大。他称，因此经济增速很可能介于该指数和官方数据之间。

彼得森国际经济研究所(Peterson Institute for International Economics)的尼古拉斯?拉迪(Nicholas Lardy)在这一观点上更进一步。他称，经济学家大多未能认识到中国服务业的活力，而如今服务业占据了将近一半的GDP。服务业的很多贡献没有在数据中反映。拉迪认为，几乎没什么理由去怀疑中国的GDP增速已放缓至7%的官方数值以下。在眼下的悲观时期，这一观点可谓大胆。

关键在于，这有赖于一种观点，即中国经济重心已经从主要为国有的制造业转移到主要为私有的服务业。这种转变正是中国所需要的。如果他说的有些许道理的话，中国日益严峻的增长数字背后或许还有一线希望。

译者/何黎