| There is widespread scepticism about the accuracy of China’s economic growth numbers, but the real question shouldn’t be whether the data is credible, it should be whether it matters that it isn’t. The official gross domestic product (GDP) figure of 6.9 percent year-on-year growth for the September quarter was widely condemned by mainly Western economists as a fiction bearing little resemblance to actual economic activity.
At the World Commodities Week conference in London this week, the consensus was that Chinese growth was more in the region of 5 to 6 percent, and that the official number owes more to political expediency than to economic reality. While this may indeed by true, the issue really should be whether absolutely accurate data is necessary when trying to get a handle on China...............................................Full Article: Source
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