How To Solve The Problem That GDP Data Still Raises Doubts?

China's GDP deflator is not a precise indicator to measure the price of domestic output. When the import price rises, it will exaggerate inflation, otherwise it will underestimate inflation.

According to the data released by the National Bureau of Statistics today, China's economy rose 6.9% year on year in the third quarter, the lowest economic growth rate since the first quarter of 2009.

However, the 6.9% economic growth rate is still higher than analysts' expectations. Some investors are still skeptical of the data.

Asian stock markets rose collectively after China's GDP data was released today. However, the stock markets of South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore gave up their gains in the morning and fell instead. By the end of the day, the Shanghai Composite Index had also fallen, down 0.14%.

Angus Nicholson, analyst of IG Group, a bond investment company, said: "GDP in the third quarter The 6.9% growth makes people doubt the authenticity of the data in the second and third quarters. Considering the other data released today, it is difficult to be optimistic about the GDP data. "

The policy researcher of NSBO, a Beijing research company, told Reuters: "In the context of the sharp slowdown of fixed asset investment and industrial output data in September, GDP exceeded expectations, which is surprising."

Julian Evans Pritchard, an economist at Capital Economics, pointed out in the report that economic growth has been greatly exaggerated.

He said that the continued stability of the official GDP data will further increase people's doubts about its credibility. The shortcomings in the calculation method of the GDP deflator and the political pressure to achieve the economic growth goal made the official GDP slow down in the third quarter slower than the level shown by third-party data.

The Wall Street News website mentioned earlier that Chang, an economist of Capital Economics Liu believes that the distortion of China's economic data is mainly due to a problem in the way it is generated, rather than being deliberately misled.

　　 Chang Liu He said that China's economic growth was overestimated by the authorities by 1 to 2 percentage points due to the wrong calculation method. If corrected, China's GDP growth will be only 5% to 6% in the 12 months to the end of the first quarter.

The key problem lies in the "GDP deflator".

GDP deflator is the ratio of nominal GDP to real GDP, which is used to convert nominal GDP into inflation Adjusted real GDP. Compared with CPI PPI Such indicators are more widely used, so they are also regarded as more useful indicators to measure the price pressure of a country. The Federal Reserve likes to use it.

Since GDP is a measure of domestic output, it only reflects the prices of goods and services produced domestically. In practice, this means that import prices are deducted from the GDP deflator, which is a common practice in countries with a "robust statistical system".

In many cases, not doing so will not have much impact. However, when import price inflation changes more significantly than domestic inflation, such as the sharp fluctuations in international commodity prices, its influence will be shown.

However, since China does not deduct changes in import prices when calculating the deflator of most industries, its deflator is more closely related to PPI.