Hiding China's Growth
Lies, damn lies and statistics
How much did China's economy really grow last year?
Our media insist it 'slowed dramatically,' to 3%, but that percentage hides the truth rather than revealing it, because 3% is a ratio, not an amount.
If I told you my 15-year-old son grew 3% last year, you'd rightly think me odd, even evasive, wouldn't you?
But unless you can remember the previous year's GDP and calculate the percentage mentally, you don't know how much it grew – and you're not intended to.
Journalists use percentages to mislead us..
Let us count the ways..
In 2007, media reported breathlessly that China's GDP grew 14.7%, 'the fastest economic growth ever recorded'. If we subtract 2006 GDP from 2007 GDP we learn that the economy was $900 billion bigger in 2007 than in 2006. Almost $1 trillion.
China's GDP only 'grew' 3% in 2022, 'the slowest growth in decades,' we were told, but this is nonsense.
3% of China's 2021 ($30 trillion) economy is almost $900 billion – the same as 2007, and – since the population is unchanged – enough to double wages and pensions in that interval.
The economy is not slowing down. It's accelerating.
China could have its first $2 trillion growth year in 2023. You heard it hear first.
On the topic of GDP growth, Russia's on target to enjoy modest growth this year, only 2% or thereabouts, but even that conclusively demonstrates that the Western sanctions have been a complete and total bust. Apparently even the Russians have been amazed.
Auto-translated, but the gist is clear:
“Russia has implemented all the regulations that were recommended by the Washington financial institutions and the European Economic Commission. Here is the result: China grew 5 times in terms of GDP, and we grew together with the core of the outgoing world economic structure, at the same pace as the United States and the European Union. We have slid down from the center of the world economy to the raw material periphery,” said Sergei Glazyev, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, speaking this week at the MEF. A separate session at the Moscow Economic Forum this year was devoted to the Chinese economic miracle. About whether the Russian Federation has enough population to adopt the Chinese experience, and why the PRC economy grew the fastest of all - in the material "BUSINESS Online".
https://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/589659