China's stable growth raises doubts
ON OCTOBER 19th China reported that its economy grew by 6.7% in the third quarter. It would have been an unsurprising, reassuring headline, except that China had reported exactly the same figure for the previous quarter—and for the quarter before that. This freakish consistency invited the scorn of China’s many “data doubters”, who have long argued that it fudges its figures. China has expanded at the same pace from one quarter to the next on numerous occasions. But it has never before claimed to grow at exactly the same rate for three quarters in a row. This growth “three-peat” is not entirely without precedent. Seven other countries have reported the same growth rate for three quarters in a row, according to a database spanning 83 countries since 1993, compiled by the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sister company.
And contrary to popular belief, China’s GDP statistics have not always been unusually smooth. Since 1993, the average gap between one quarter’s growth and the next has been 0.77 percentage points. Fourteen countries have reported a smaller average gap. Either China’s policymakers are newly successful at stabilising growth or its statisticians are newly determined to smooth the data. But if the number-crunchers are to blame, one wonders why they do not try harder to hide it.
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