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.
