Respect to EE for shouting out M&M, given Joeris criticisms of EE. Big dog stuff. Both channels are top tier and share content that has helped me learn a lot. One of the few channels in the space I recommend to my readers and viewers
oh thank you for bringing this up, I thought it was just some other economics channel. I was YEARNING for someone who criticises this guy a bit, for a while. His monetarism is highly triggering.
@Economics Explained It is the US, the empire of lies, per Putin, that cooks books and lies all the time. The US with its leader judged by economy every single quarter, that has more incentive to lie about the GDP. The best part is that US GDP, no all of the world's GDP is calculated by the US or the affiliates it controls!!!! Man....
Would be cool to see you rank Czech Republic, some things are awesome, but other things are so bad that they completely negate the good. I think the score would be way below 5, as the growth would get probably 1 point. We just reached the point of being developed economy, but started stagnating immediately after. Its also due to lack of workers, as companies refuse to expand, because getting additional workers is close to impossible. Luckily lot of Ukrainian refugees came here and hopefully a lot of them will stay. Its so bad that on some possitions,you have to keep a person who doesn't work properly and even annoys coworkers as there is noone to replace that person
Do you think Estonia is a better model for the Czech Republic? Estonia knows they don't have many natural resources, and don't have a huge cheap labor pool for manufacturing. So they've focused on an educated, digital-savvy workforce that seems to compete well. I would think Czechia could do something similar.
@Lord Vermintide lol that's a good point, also idk how common English is as a second language in Czech Republic, but I would assume far less so compared to Western Europe, and esp. Germany (and in the case of France, many African immigrants already speak French as a first or second language)
@R S Language is a factor people always overlook with immigration, but I think for many people it's at least as important as economic prospects. Britain is always a popular destination regardless if you could argue that France, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands etc are better places to live, because everyone and their mother speaks English as a second language already. It's easier to settle in that way. Contrast that to a language like Czech which requires new alphabetic characters, not only has genders but also this "case" bullshit that changes suffixes based on context, and man. It's a headache. I can see that being an obstacle to someone moving there. (Trying to learn it because my gf is Czech. Shit's difficult to get your head around.)
Have been waiting for that for ages also. Starting to get really tired of all these rankings putting thing past germany or france, whilst the eu is an economic bloc
A licensed accountant working for one of the big real estate developer once told us , even if he spend no money at all , he cannot afford one of the condos the company is selling. The condo is 2 mil HKD , roughly 263k USD , so you can imagine the real situation there. And he is already considered a "middle-class" there. And that was 2018.
To add to what the others said, there is a simpler solution: include the error on any quoted number. For example, country A's GDP is $4,560,000,000 ± $10,000,000. This standard in "hard" sciences like physics, but often isn't done properly elsewhere. A number without an error is pretty meaningless, if you think about it, as the true value could be literally anything.
@Robert Beckman To further elaborate; The standard practice is that, if not specified, all displayed figures are assumed to be significant. Therefore, if writing in milliliters, the 'between 999.6 and 1000.4 ml' is the only correct interpretation of '1000ml'. However, if they wished to still use milliliters, but only were accurate to the nearest liter, then they would write it as '0.1e4 ml' (0.1 has 1 significant figure, and 'e4' means times 10000).
@Robert Beckman I see my mistake, its been a long time since I last encountered this stuff so I guess my memory was a bit off. thanks for spotting my mistakes before it could cause too much confusion.
@Andy that was my reference point and I wonder if the same can be said for a higher number of trailing zeros (one or two more perhaps). Maybe indicative of deliberate overestimation on the part of secretive institutions/countries
I used to trust your videos. How can you confidently say China's economy is half of what the IMF, World Bank, and UN all agreed on? And based on a single research paper that literally just assumes the officials have it in their best interest to lie? With such bold claims I expected more hard data, yet this video is riddled with theoretical projections that make almost 0 sense. I'm just going to assume you know very few ordinary Chinese people cus their average income is DEFINITELY not $4500 a year 🤣
@Cooper P you actually think everyone else who have different opinion than yours are all propaganda? if that's the case you're better off living in a tiny little cave with the opinion of yours.
I bet you know tons of rural, extremely poor Chinese ppl... Why are there so many propaganda comments under every yt video about China? Do they at least pay you guys well?
During my career in manufacturing I learned that it is unwise to use the same statistics (eg freight car loadings) to measure a condition or trend and also to measure an individual''s or group of individuals' job performance.
17:30 For GDP per capita, you should also adjust for the lower population that China has been found to have. The re-worked GDP PC figure would still be much lower than $10.4k, but higher than $4.5k.
Whatever Chinese economy is it's great....we outsiders can't live without their exported items ...so even if it's inflated it's going great.... maybe at most it can be argued that normal Chinese citizens are actually worse than they said to be ...but as a whole full Chinese economy is in decent shape because of their export and capacity to produce goods at good quality with lowest price to serve the people
Nobody who calls themself a scientist would use a single data point to draw their conclusion. The light level data is just one point. It's highly dependent on a lot of factors, cultural, political and economic. You must have other data points to tease out the contributions of each factor. For example, a culture which values privacy and builds high-rise residential buildings would be dark, because illumination would be hidden behind curtains. You'll only observe the exterior lights, which won't light up the entire building, just the gardens and walkways on the ground level. So a 6 story building any brighter than a 3 story one, even if it houses twice as many people. Someone who cares about the real numbers (rather than writing an attention-grabbing headline) will confirm their findings by looking at the amount of power produced or transmitted. If you don't have official numbers, then look at the number and types of power plants, power lines, and transformers. Going a step further, you can check *those* numbers by looking at oil, coal and gas extracted or imported for thermal plants, and weather data for hydroelectricity. So on and so forth. It's easy for China to fake one set of numbers. Much harder for them to fake all of the numbers in a way that still made sense. This is how audits are done. They don't have a time machine to go back and check what actually happened, they just check if *all* of the numbers match up.
As someone who has taught chemistry for the past 5+ years, thank you for going over precision vs. accuracy, and significant figures! Nice to see it being used outside of the traditional sciences. Edit: precession to precision
@sheldoncooper0 Is that why a couple hundred thousand people in the USA die every year from wrong prescriptions? That's more than how many die from illegal drugs.
@sheldoncooper0 the lsvel of stupidity and trolling you show clearly indicates you're not a doctor. Precision is a formal measure of data and isn't used in surgery. You're using an informal definition of precise. Lol.
@Economics Explained China also built its own Space Station in 2 years, while it took 12 years and involved the US bullying many other nation for money + Russian tech to build ISS. China is not only #1 economy, #1 in military and #1 in technology. Oh, have you seen the articles describing US aircraft carriers as Sitting Ducks? China did not even need hypersonic missiles to destroy US carriers, but they got them anyway. Just a swarm of regular cruise missiles can easily sink US carriers, as this is no longer WW2. In the world of drones, satellites, and GPS, surface ships cannot hide in the open sea anymore, their precise locations are all public information.
One caution with the "GDP per capita" numbers is that China is basically multiple countries in one. If you look at the coastal provinces (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Fujian, Tianjin, Zhejiang, Guangdong), they have a GDP per capita similar to other advanced economies, especially if you adjust for PPP. Whereas the internal provinces have GDP per capita that hover around the poverty line.
@david consumer of math So, I am from china,Could you tell me what is internal passport?why you always created some Strange urban legend about China？ We do not reject criticism from outsiders, but it is just disgusting to fabricate lies to gain your own sense of superiority. 你们如果只是反中或者别的什么 那无所谓，作为竞争者，我们不排斥外人的批评，但是如果靠制造谎言来获得你们自己的优越感，这只是令人作呕。
@I couldn't think of a name It just you.image,not real, I live in china,Iam a chinese,if you consider educated and hospital,of course,difference is huge,but in other country like turkey,america,or mexico,Which depend on money.
As chinese we don't care what western said,after all,none country can develop with the help of western economics.but some country have been into trouble. We can refer to it, but we can never believe it completely，not only for us,but also for you,western is builted by lies and fraud.It's orginated in their history,Genocides and illegal occupation of indigenous lands, then brainwash indigenous people with religion and make them into slaves. The economy is not fundamentally dependent on the service sector, but on manufacturing. More advanced production methods, higher efficiency and high-quality manufacturing are the basis of economic development. At least, we, the Chinese Communist Party, are strengthening the strength of China's manufacturing industry, so we support him.
$17.7 trillion is impressive, considering China's economy was smaller than the UK's in 2005. China's continuous growth does seem too good to be true, especially as GDP growth shows they are still yet to experience a recession despite demographic and political problems.
I watched the video on the light-paper and I pointed out over there that China with all its real estate developments, high-speed rail and, shall we say, high-intensity urbanism probably increased its light-output a lot MORE than a comparable economy in the respective time period.
I would like to see the ranking of Germany. You've ranked the 5 largest economies except for Germany. I'm guessing it'll get a 7.8 with "Stability and Confidence" being the lowest given the Ukraine war's impact on its political and economic climate.
Hi economics explained team, I have been watching your channel For a while and I am impressed in the way you explain complex economic terminology with simple example but the video about US economy and China economy seems to be fully biased and on my view I feel it’s one sided
Great video. Money and Macro did a good in depth video covering different aspects of the same thing. They spent more time analyzing the light usage to gdp data and found that it was good use of data even if it’s not entirely accurate. But even the original paper said that his light data showing 60% lower gdp in China doesn’t mean the 60% is entirely accurate. It just gives you an idea of how exaggerated the gdp data likely is. I’ve traveled China a few times and noticed that city cores of major cities look rich or middle class but outer parts of the city are as poor as typical Mexico (also traveled it) and rural areas are African level poor. Rural in the context of China can mean a town of 300,000!
@Jay Bee ". I just said electricity consumption can’t be used to judge if a country is lying about their economy or not." That's literally the point of PEER reviewed research to demonstrate how a country likely is lying about their GDP using LIGHTS (not electricity consumption). " You don’t need much electricity if you are pumping out minerals resources, and selling it to make money and grow your economy" I don't think you understand the importance of the lights. The lights signal increase wealth of the people. Poorer countries have fewer lights which can take many forms -- fewer street lights, fewer commercial centers, etc. There is some variation due to many factors discussed in the M&M video but it gets you a rough estimate. So if China was 60% below, than it's true GDP is likely not going to be anywhere near the reported GDP. It doesnt mean it's exactly 60% below -- think more like it's 60% below give or take 10%pts (i.e. 50-70% below) with 95% confidence.
@HomerOJSimpson I am not working for China. I just said electricity consumption can’t be used to judge if a country is lying about their economy or not. You don’t need much electricity if you are pumping out minerals resources, and selling it to make money and grow your economy. In China’s case they might be lying but that isn’t the case for resource dependent economies especially in Africa.
@Jay Bee “using electricity consumption is lying”. Well, they didn’t use electrify consumption but amount of light so you’re wrong. And the study was conducted then peer reviewed by experts and not someone working for Beijing like you.
I mean number can be made up but if you live in China, you can see the life change so fast, my parent started out studying under no electricity now travel the world in a whimp. 2 decades ago, people with car consider rich now they just a normal thing.
And yet a big portion of the population is impoverished and poor. You can't give your anecdote and make a general statement especially since you're already at an advantage the fact that you can access the internet. Also obviously the examples you gave are true for everyone because technology advanced globally. Cars are more accessible now compared to the past.
I went to other Asian countries and I can tell you they also change so fast as well. If you watch some interview of big investors asking "What if North Korea open theirs market?" You can expect the same things. The problem with China is it's all in the surface, face value like fire hydrant reveal recently that doesn't connect water pump. Many achievement is for look only and not functional like lots of tofu projects.
Why not use your original score and the adjusted score in the rankings going forward? At the end you mentioned you will keep Chinas original score going forward because many other countries also misreport economic data. But among the countries you have near the top, China is alone on how much they manipulate it. And considering their manipulation is estimated to be as much as over 2x the actual gdp data, it would make sense to keep both scores going forward.
@Lawrence the poster you are replying to is likely an astorturfer - he engages in large threads with anti-china comments under any video even remotely related to china, he posts the same arguments over and over again and rejects or pretends he doesnt see any evidence that goes against his narrative. He is a bot do not engage with him. He has been caught in the act under multiple videos doing this and in a thread under another video he was exposed as posting from Eglin Airforce Base
Gotta say, that high ranking for New Zealand is looking increasingly silly. I get that social-democratic minded economists like the current NZ economy-government, but come on, New Zealand is not an economic high-flier in any way. It has a high cost of living, with many young New Zealanders leaving for Australia and elsewhere.
One thing you haven't considered: due to the portion of SOEs in China, GDP can go up by, for example, lending more money between SOEs (on paper), selling things (on paper).
@Tritium I never aid it wouldn't, just like all the tofu projects. They will build just for show and the dumb one is you to think the bridge will not collapse.
Regarding the section about light emission correlating with economic output: that’s actually not what the paper says. The idea is that GROWTH of light output over time is highly correlated with economic growth, and thus you can use it to determine whether someone is cooking the books regarding their economy. There is not much room for discretion on this one, as it just compares historical nighttime maps to make approximate guesses about the amount of growth a country has experienced.
Hundreds of world class and renowned academics, economists analysts, banks, investment funds and other institutions spend their careers continuously combing through China statistics with a fine comb. Far more than most countries. The figures are well within any tolerance.
Really great video, as always. I would like to se a collaboration between EE and M&M, i think that could be fun or maybe just EE making a vist on the M&M talks. And one more thing I hope you see this EE. I would like to see Denmark (I'm Danish) on the country leader board list. You have talked about all the other nordic contries (Island, Sweden and Norway), I know we a not Norway (But it's our oile "national joke"). Anyway keep the good work, I really enjoy your video's :D
Another great, informative and easy to understand video! Not to mention the best one I've seen yet explaining China's GDP, using level headed tone and without bias or inflammatory language found in most content about China.
1990. The Economist. China's economy has come to a halt. 1996. The Economist. China's economy will face a hard landing 1998. The Economist: China's economy entering a dangerous period of sluggish growth. 1999. Bank of Canada: Likelihood of a hard landing for the Chinese economy. 2000. Chicago Tribune: China currency move nails hard landing risk coffin. 2001. Wilbanks, Smith & Thomas: A hard landing in China. 2002. Westchester University: China Anxiously Seeks a Soft Economic Landing 2003. KWR International: How to find a soft landing if China.. 2004. The Economist: The great fall of China? 2005. Nouriel Roubini: The Risk of a Hard Landing in China 2006. International Economy: Can China Achieve a Soft Landing? 2007. TIME: Is China's Economy Overheating? Can China avoid a hard landing? 2008. Forbes: Hard Landing In China? 2009. Fortune: China's hard landing. China must find a way to recover. 2010. Nouriel Roubini: Hard landing coming in China. 2011. Business Insider: A Chinese 2012. American Interest: Dismal Economic News from China: A Hard Landing 2013. Zero Hedge: A Hard Landing In China 2014. CNBC: A hard landing in China. 2015. Forbes: Congratulations, You Got Yourself A Chinese Hard Landing.. 2016. The Economist: Hard landing looms for China 2017. National Interest: Is China's Economy Going To Crash? 2020. Economics Explained: The Scary Solution to the Chinese Debt Crisis 2021. Global Economics: Has China's Downfall Started? 2022. Cathie Wood: China's COLLAPSE Is FAR Worse Than You Think 2022. Business Basics: China's Economic Crisis, GDP is Crashing, Protests Everywhere. China's financial crisis is Here. Fxck the MSM
With all the protest happening in china right now, shouldn't we be lowering the "Stability and Confidence" part of the leader board score? I'm surprised to see that protests weren't even mentioned in the video at all, given that it's the most significant thing happening in the nation right now.
Oh I have no qualms about admitting how much my life is improved by Chinese labor. I just wish the workers were paid adequately for their contribution. Yes, even if that means phones get way more expensive. I don't care. I'm not the "average consumer" and I don't believe in "rational economic actors" anyway.
"That appoints collected broadly and in large numbers." No I know that's not a joke, because economists have no sense of humor. But the large numbers bit can't go unnoticed.
Awesome video. One country that sticks outs as a sore thumb economically is Nigeria, as there are multiple reports of it having a puppy government for Shell (a lot of them have flown under the radar), with the subsequent envirnonmental crises and corruption to facilitate such a power move by a big company putting strain on the average person living there, such a video would not necessarily be in line with your series of ranking a country's economy. I still however think it would be awesome content from you especially given your research and knowledge and you do not have to specifically focus on the activities of Shell on the country. Cheers!
There's a documentary called End of the Line. Biologists were trying to find out why global figures showed fishing catches going up when, examined locally, it seemed most fish populations were in decline. From the documentary: "For every part of the world, the reporting was right except for Chinese waters .... the Chinese figures could not be right. They were just made up." Also from documentary: "We concluded that they were so biased upward that if you corrected for this effect, the world catch would not be increasing but decreasing." One nation's falsified reports were overblown enough to completely skew the statistical data of the entire planet. Let that sink in.
Here's a question: if China's economic growth is so robust, why do they send so much capital out of the country (eg, purchase US farmland, buy US gov't debt, buy US food corporations, etc) rather than reinvest it domestically where there greater returns should theoretically be found? I don't have the answer, but a suggestion would be that its actual growth is much less than stated.
@Ben W They have a lot of accumulated wealth derived from past growth. but in economics it is always a question of what is going to happen=not what has happened
if china's economic growth is not so robust, where do they get so much captial to send out of the country, you dont' see that much investment from African countires , dont you
@Jim Cronin Just wondering, do you get most of your news from US, UK sponsored mainstream media sources? The reality is that most of these reports deliberately exaggerate the so called "human rights violations" and often hires US based "researchers" or even human rights groups to manufacture a narrative that is not backed by actual evidence on the ground.
@rncmv Perhaps you have reasons to state that China is not a totalitarian society, but I cannot see them. I see ethnic cleansing, oppression of Tibet, curtailment of religious freedom, inventing and then worldwide spreading of COVID 19, forced abortions and sterilizations, welding people inside their apartments for months with no provocation, Belt & Road, Hong Kong crackdown, TikTok, Spratley Islands appropriation, etc. Need I continue?
Just wondering why we have been criticized china‘s lie on economic Statistics for so long, and China is still standing up and not collapsing, and see like some countries we’d been praised but their economy finally collapsed, anyone tell me why?
@Harry Wu China's guilt in America's eyes is China outgrowing and surpassing themselves in a lot of fields. I'm sure if China remained poor and remained a sweatshop to make cheap junk for the West, then suddenly America would be praising how humane and good the Chinese government is.
@insertnamehere ok anti-China has been American goal for so long, I guess since the end of Soviet union, but 911 and American's wars in ME, held back Anti-China movement to later on til Trump's appearance.
lol according to 1000 videos on youtube China collapsed in 30 days, 6 months ago. I'm sure all those videos have nothing to do with USA's 500 million dollar bill to smear anti-China "propaganda".
China has enough size to keep lying for a long time. Their industrial capabilities is no joke as proved by real goods they produced. BUT, do their economic number actually reflect reality or just like how other communist state that fudge number from down to the top
Due to heavy state interference they've done their best to damage control and keep their economy from collapsing but if nothing changes they're on their way to a collapse. It's just happening slower.
Amazing video and thank you for breaking it down!! Despite the economic downturn, I'm so happy😊I have been earning $ 60,000 returns from my $7,000 investment every 12days
Regarding precision: Its amusing that Olympic gymnastics are scored to a thousandths (.000) of a point, yet Olympic running events are only measured to a hundredth (.00) of a second. Apparently personal opinion can be measured with more precision than something as finicky as time. 😂
You're using points vs seconds. Completely different things. Getting times that are the same to a hundredth of a second is highly improbable and would likely not make a difference. But getting averages that would be close to a thousandth is possible and easy to measure.
To those wondering, Statistical Capacity Score doesn't measure scores of USA and western Europe, because their system is perfect. Of course I'm being ironic, 'cause this is a VERY colonial view of the world . This 'Score' is just a 'scientific/technical' excuse of perpetuate prejudice over peripheric countries.
I tend to believe this numbers are close enough because I live in a country of 6-7k usd per capita so there is not way Chinese have less than that and I'm comparing rural areas, poor areas, salaries, etc.
it can be more clear if someone can stop saying just China as long as the govts of China make totally different contributions to this progress. Provincial govt as I heard around would adjust their data to a smoother line than the normal one as they believe their leaders would favor those who can make substantial growth. Some had it that the stats during 1980 and 1992 can be extremely underestimated because at that time the provincial governments only need to hand up a GDP-based quota to Beijing. It is just like in a company everyone always makes figures favorable for themselves but your boss finds everyone is making figures false for the company. So I believe this is not a lie but more like a systematic error.
Actually, the rich province in China will say the GDP number smaller than is actually to be，Because smaller number can decreased Tax，And the poor province in China will enlarge the number.
Great video that provides important insights on the background to this question. The two sources used are well researched, however I do believe they only show one side of the story. China’s GDP is extremely complex, and you can find just as much research papers supporting that it is actually bigger than official figures. A 200 page research paper published from the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that there are key areas within the calculation of GDP that China does not align with international standards (specifically inputted rent) which results in total GDP to actually be ~12% understated. This paper also makes reference to your first paper from Holz. Source: CSIS, Broken Abacus (AUTHORS Daniel H. Rosen, Beibei Bao; FOREWORD Carsten Holz) Another example is by the National Bureau of Economic Research published in 2017 which uses the same method (Night time lights) as the second paper you referenced, and concluded that China’s GDP is also understated. Source: NBER paper w23323 (Hunter Clark, Maxim Pinkovskiy & Xavier Sala-i-Martin) There are plenty of other well researched papers that support this, and all this is not even getting into the topic of PPP (which the CIA notes is the better measurement of China’s economy), and puts China well ahead in GDP rankings (and is already the largest economy in the world) Source: Any CIA factbook website footnote on China PPP vs GDP Overall I think this video is well researched, but the topic is much more complex. There’s an ocean of research on this topic that argue both sides with plenty to dispute the assertion that China is inflating GDP figures, so the conclusion made that China’s GDP is only $9 Trillion is an extremely unlikely. Great video overall.
The light pollution method of measuring GDP was meaningful 20y ago, but now is way out of whack. For example I live in Bulgaria, in the EU. On a recent night photo of Eastern Europe from space showing how dark Ukraine is (due to Russian terrorism) compared to countries around it, I noticed Bulgaria is also relatively darker compared to say Serbia. Except Bulgaria has higher GDP then Serbia so why would it be darker. Well electricity is way more expensive in Bulgaria then in Serbia and also Bulgaria has had access to EU infrastructure funds, so the vast majority of the lighting infrastructure in Bulgaria has been upgraded in the past 20y to be directed down(where it matters) and be energy efficient(LED lamps etc.). There is this situation that the poorest country in the EU may have one of the most efficient night lighting networks in the EU, precisely because the incentive was higher to update those resources so they won't cost much. I would imagine that different regions of China would have vastly different lighting development level too.
I’m only a few minutes in but is this about the “night-light” study… Edit: it was, that’s a very interesting study I’m glad you talked more about it. Great attempt on the Chinese names, however I feel you (like many in the West) give China the benefit of the doubt.
Awesome video! Do you think you will respond to Money in Macro's video about China's GDP being up to 50% lower? Edit: Welp... I feel like a clown. Didn't realize you mentioned it later in the video lol
@Jhamil AntezanaThe study apparently accounted for a lot of potential variables. Not saying that all variables were accounted for or that all of them were accounted correctly, but even if we’re giving a lot of leeway to china it’s gdp is still probably like 40-30% lower than reported. That makes all the problems it’s facing worse and it weakens it’s stance against the US
Recent years, the GDP is no more the evaluation of local government, instead the less people under poverty line becomes the evaluation. That's why the list of new 5-year goals for the nation does not mention GDP figures anymore.
I agree some numbers are inflated but the reasoning that officials must present pretty statistics to please their superiors isn't a reason that holds much ground in the current system. The fake production numbers existed in highly planned economies where government input/access to credit were significantly limited. While China remains a "socialist" country, I do not think the same could be said about its economy. When GDP is grown by ever increasing investment figures, government entities will be have the means and ability to borrow funds to generate growth. Greater investment results in a cycle or greater savings and lower consumption. This causes an issue of over-investment which can be seen in the composition of China's most valuable industry sector being electric utilities (e.g. dams & energy infrastructure) The figures are likely to be within an acceptable confidence interval, but the quality of growth is problematic (LT). So maybe its not the numbers are totally fake, but that the numbers have a high probability that they do no represent a long-term sustainable way of development. These measures are complex tho, even US GDP stats which has a much higher consumption component could argue whether the average American household is worth their current high-leverage ratios. Just my take on it, still got plenty of studies to go through rn
if economy of a country is not socialist, the country itself is not socialist either; there is nothing else in "socialism" except for economy; in short: socialism is an economic system, same as capitalism
9:39 If the growth rate is always over-estimated by, say, 1% for 25 years. Take, for example, 6% and 7%. After 25 years, 1.07^25=5.4274, 1.06^25=4.2919. You think people can not tell the difference? There cannot be so many fools.
The highway traffic junction at 1:29 is not China, it is the Wat Salud interchange in Thailand, south east of Bangkok. Not really relevant to the story perhaps, but although I really live this channel, I regret it never actually shows actually interesting footage. It is basically a podcast that is more expensive to make but perhaps with a bigger audience than when just published on i tunes. [Edit] and then in the very last minute he plugs his new Spotify channel lol. I didn't know that, but given what I wrote above that makes perfect sense 😄
Remember boiz, it's wiser to overestimate an enemy rather than to underestimate. Let's just overestimate China so we can be better prepared when there's that 1% chance that they ain't lying
4:15 Hey mate, just to let you know it's not the measurement techniques. The difference between IMF and World Bank is because they are two different years (EDIT: it's actually three). The IMF figure you are reporting is the 2022 year, World Bank is 2021. There are global standards involved in measuring GDP, aka the 2008 SNA and they are the same for both that's because they are not doing the measuring, they are using the data collected by the statistical agency for that country. In Australia's case that's the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Differences are more likely due to the conversion to USD (using end of period, or average conversion rate, or whatever) and/or the conversion from financial year to calendar years, rather than anything measurement related. The calendar year conversion is important, because Australian annual GDP is reported on financial year basis, aka July-June.
@Bram Heerebout It is the same agency's numbers, it's *three* different years (as another the poster above noted). So, I don't think his point does stand in this case. It's actually misleading by suggesting they are collected by three different agencies (it's extremely labor intensive to collect national statistics, even in a tiny country - and an outside agency wouldn't be able to access the granularity of data required - for reasons of privacy, national security, etc) and that the reason is measurement techniques. Later in the video he talks about how a national statistical agency might not want to fix errors, but revisions are very common and anyone using the data needs to be aware of it, and more critically should use the latest published data even for earlier years to ensure can be compared. The BEA goes into detail here: apps.bea.gov/scb/2021/01-january/0121-revisions-to-gdp-gdi.htm
So it I read your comment correctly, you caught an important mistake - comparing two different years - but his point still stands - even based on the same measurements different agencies will publish different numbers, even for well organized Western countries.
Finally someone points that out. If we want to be serious in using data, we need to understand how they are generated. Economics suffers from people that have fancy discourse but don’t really understand.
I have lived in a small county in Shaanxi Province, China, for 20 years. Our standard of living has more than doubled. In the 1980s my parents lived in mud and brick houses that you can't even see if you go to the countryside now. I don't believe in statistics. I only believe in my own experience.
i like your videos, but have 1 suggestion to add national/government/corporate debt to your equation. Japan's economy on a 4th place make your chart kinda ... unreliable, in my view. just a thought.
Thanks 4 a Great Report! Another Great Done!! Of course, Economic Estimates are exactly that; Estimates! ... However, ccp isn't "estimating" they are simply not even try to give an estimate! Their economy is max! 50% of stated!! Thus, Japan is even Bigger, as their unofficial one isn't even being seen!! ... Qs? If 2-300M servants aren't working, due to own made C19-Lock-Downs, plus Export to US down 40%, plus WEstern Diversification of at least 10-20% of their production elsewhere in Asia, Latin America; and ccp is still seeing a Growing GD!!?? ... If a WEstern Nation had 20-30% of population not producing anything for 1 year, and export to other nations is down, even by 10-20%, plus 10-20% of production Gone(!), to other nations, and we still say our GDP is Growing, most Stupid Non-Economist would Understand it isn't true!!! ... Currently, ccp economy is in REALity, with even Own given, other types of statistics, Exposing a GDP Decline of.Double Digits, and at least 10% in only 2-3 years, due to C-19 restriction years! .. Further, not mention the Speed Train Economic Disaster with overall a 20% capacity, which is even a Bigger Bubble than their House Production Bubble, where 30-50% of Capacity is unused, while Millions are still waiting for their own 1st apartment!! ... The ccp Economy is in REAL fact as Good as the FTX Scam, but on a Nation level!!! ... Your Program are Great, but in this case you only touch the ccp economy surface, while the Full True Economic picture = FTX IMPLOSION!!!
Why would you give China a 6 on leadership? From what I have been reading the stability of China's economic output is at real risk. Investors like countries with legal systems they can work with and in China the government can just say no to that. Look at what has happened with many of its organizations, Alibaba, Didi, Ten Cent. None of them were safe from the Chinese system.
Despite the economic downturn,I'm so happy☺️. I have been earning $ 60,200 returns from my $7,000 investment every 13days. The truth is with this recent economy Everyone needs more than there salary to be financially stable. The the best thing to do with your money is to lnvest it rightly because money left for saving always end up used with no returns..
One party system may not be bad. Take life expectancy of both China and US as example. In 1950 China life expectancy is about 38 vs US 68. After 71 years, in 2021 China life expectancy is 78.2 vs US 76.1( latest figure by CDC , US life expectancy dropped by 3 in 2020-2021 period from 79.1 originally). China expectancy increase by 40 years while US increase by 8 years only. China life expectancy increase 5 time faster than US. Also Look at health care by comparing MMA rate( maternal mortality rate): in 1950 China maternal mortality is 1500 women death per 100,000 birth vs US 100 women death per 100,000 births. In 2021, China MMA is 16.1 vs US 23.8 per 100,000 (the lower the number , the better health care service level) . Infant mortality rate: in 1950 China infant mortality is 195 death per 1000 birth vs US 26.8 death per 1000 births. In 2021, China infant mortality rate drop to 5 per 1000 vs US 5.4 per 1000 birth. In fact among top 10 population countries, China’s life expectancy is longest 78.2 years old vs US 76.1 and India 70, Indonesia 71.7, Pakistan 67.3, Brazil 75.9, Nigeria 54.7, Bangladesh 72.6, Russia 73.1, Mexico 75. And people in China retire at 55 years old on average to access pension. About 12 years earlier than US's 67 years requirement while some countries may not have pension at all. It means an American need work extra 40*52*12=25,000 hrs in his life than an average person in China. It also means an American only has 9 years to enjoy retirement while an average person in China has 22 years to enjoy retirement. Also it is not means or asset tested when access pension in China. It means you get your pension monthly even you stay overseas, are a multi-millionaire or have another job after retirement. Singapore is another example of one party system. Its gdp is highest among Asia.
I love and respect you and the content you make but I gotta say: as. Californian I can't help but laugh everytime you say data. I swear it sounds like you're saying "dah-dar," or "dah-tah." You do you though, I'm going to still watch and support regardless.
That is a very interesting discussion, so thanks for that. Without meaning to dispute any of it, I have a few comments *The title: "How Much Does China Lie About Its Economic Statistics?" The answer is, based on this video, that China - as a national entity - does *not* lie about its economic statistics. It rather has poor quality data collection. The fact that Li Keqiang, who has a Master Of Economics, said what he said, indicates fairly strongly that it isn't China - the nation - misrepresenting economic data. Central planning, even at Politburo level, is dealing with the same problem as everyone else. Yet, when cynics say 'You can't trust Chinese data' the allegation is that they are fraudulently altered, not simply deficient. *Who cares anyway? Even if economic data were, hypothetically, fraudulently altered, you have to ask who that actually affects? The only point of doing so I can imagine is, as to which referred, for propagandistic use by authoritarian government. But even that is a stretch. China has MANY ways of controlling its population, and I am dubious that the apparent docility thereof has much if anything, to do with a perception that per capita wealth is increasing. For anyone else on the planet, the accuracy of economic stats makes no difference at all, other than creating lists of general interest. Whether one buys from China, sells to China, invests in China, your decisions are based on other factors, not some perusal of the GDP, ex/im, or credit numbers. Other factors are. *One aspect, and I would suggest the most important for economic stats, was not touched on: trend. When you look at, say, employment data, the actual number of people with a job, or not, or whatever, may get attention in the tabloids, but is really of very little importance. From the point of view of decision making and comparison, changes and trends are important. That being the case, as long as Chinese data are equally defective one period to the next, they are likely just as useful anyway. In the case of China, there are soooooooo many policy based distortions in the economy, eg staggering over construction of home units, equally staggering over supply of huge but unneeded infrastructure projects, that some wonky economic stats are hardly an issue! Nor would accurate ones make any difference, as the purpose of these projects is to create jobs (which they of course do), and foster industry and domestic consumption. For the ROW, I feel quite sure Fortescue Metal doesn't hang off Chinese economic data. Twiggy is just looking at how much iron ore they are buying. And in that regard, as with all exporters to China of anything, politics and exogenous real world events (hey, heard of covid!?), and so on, are what really makes a difference to the decision process.
Includes Chinese wartime statistics, something most people will not admit. How do you kill 300,000 in a city thats proven to have a population of 200,000 in 1937?
5:22 For the love of god, please don't round it until you get to the final answer. If you're rounding at every step then you will potentially have huge errors.
@Jay Cie Standard practice in sciences is to round at the end, to least accurate digit/decimal in the data when operations of additive (addition/subtraction) or to round to the next factor of 10 whenever there are non-additive operations (multiplication/division/etc). Its not arbitrary. How you round is a product of the data itself.
No you actually should. Rounding to the millions place when you are talking about trillions is just a bad move. Rounding to the billions place means that the real number is within a half billion more or less, The error is at most .05% or if you compounded it 100 times a range of 95.12%-105.13% of the actual figure. That is far better than the acceptable amount of error in the methodology.
You can round off like that when - with the data itself - it is not possible to be so precise, which makes it more inaccurate to not round it off. Also, he is not talking about every step, probably just the answer. But for the most part you're right ofcourse!
I think that one thing this video makes clear is that economists - even large, important organizations of them - aren't necessarily good statisticians. :)
Another point of interest is the Debt to GDP ratio. According to World Economics Research, China's Debt to GDP ratio is 58.7%. Depending on how that percentage is calculated as well as implementing the different assumption, it could be above 100%. It would be a lot closer to the United States' Debt to GDP ratio. This could be worrying since China is still in the development stage. But then again, China's banks are state run so I'm not sure how exactly this may affect them.
China's debt is not the same as debt from western countries. China doesn't borrow money from external institutions and does not raise money through capital markets. China doesn't owe money to anyone outside of China and its debt is actually from the state banks which is government's money. On the other hand, the US debt is real and it pays billions in interest to countries like China that holds its debts.
Fair to say that every government lies about its economic success to some degree - but when there's no opposition or critical media: those lies can go uncorrected and unchallenged.
This is the opposite of what happens in African economies. African countries have problems with getting accurate economic measurements. I remember Nigeria’s GDP almost doubled in 2014 because the government didn’t keep up with the economic data for years. Ghana had a 50 percent jump in GDP, Tanzania, Kenya also had high increase in their gdp rebasing. African government don’t like to acknowledge their economic growth so they can get more financial assistance from foreign countries.
You have to travel to China and see their buildings, hydro dams, subways, shopping malls, roads and airports. See how much it costs to buy food and fuel for your car. Seeing is believing.
@Frozen Bus Channel 魔雪巴士頻道 i mean if the new calc are to be believed, then china GDP per capita would be lower than India in PPP terms and anyone that's visited both nations knows that's just absurd, the diff is b/w 1st and 3rd world. even the rural areas of china have a better infrastructure,power, standard of living, and cleanliness than metro Mumbai which is India's powerhouse
... I didn't even realize it was a question. It's like asking if there's income inequality problems in the US. Unless you are an idiot or a propagandist, the answer is yes.
Respect to EE for shouting out M&M, given Joeris criticisms of EE. Big dog stuff. Both channels are top tier and share content that has helped me learn a lot. One of the few channels in the space I recommend to my readers and viewers
@[yeet yeet] what is monetarism?
@[yeet yeet] what is Monetarism?
oh thank you for bringing this up, I thought it was just some other economics channel.
I was YEARNING for someone who criticises this guy a bit, for a while. His monetarism is highly triggering.
@Economics Explained It is the US, the empire of lies, per Putin, that cooks books and lies all the time.
The US with its leader judged by economy every single quarter, that has more incentive to lie about the GDP.
The best part is that US GDP, no all of the world's GDP is calculated by the US or the affiliates it controls!!!!
Man....
Thanks - much appreciated!
Would be cool to see you rank Czech Republic, some things are awesome, but other things are so bad that they completely negate the good. I think the score would be way below 5, as the growth would get probably 1 point. We just reached the point of being developed economy, but started stagnating immediately after. Its also due to lack of workers, as companies refuse to expand, because getting additional workers is close to impossible. Luckily lot of Ukrainian refugees came here and hopefully a lot of them will stay. Its so bad that on some possitions,you have to keep a person who doesn't work properly and even annoys coworkers as there is noone to replace that person
I'd like to work there if the salary is high and cost of living is low
Do you think Estonia is a better model for the Czech Republic? Estonia knows they don't have many natural resources, and don't have a huge cheap labor pool for manufacturing. So they've focused on an educated, digital-savvy workforce that seems to compete well. I would think Czechia could do something similar.
@Lord Vermintide lol that's a good point, also idk how common English is as a second language in Czech Republic, but I would assume far less so compared to Western Europe, and esp. Germany (and in the case of France, many African immigrants already speak French as a first or second language)
@R S Language is a factor people always overlook with immigration, but I think for many people it's at least as important as economic prospects. Britain is always a popular destination regardless if you could argue that France, Germany, Sweden, Netherlands etc are better places to live, because everyone and their mother speaks English as a second language already. It's easier to settle in that way.
Contrast that to a language like Czech which requires new alphabetic characters, not only has genders but also this "case" bullshit that changes suffixes based on context, and man. It's a headache. I can see that being an obstacle to someone moving there. (Trying to learn it because my gf is Czech. Shit's difficult to get your head around.)
@Florence Baendes definitely just hate anything remotely east of Germany and Austria 😂
Great video!
It would be interesting to have a video on the whole EU economy and how you would rank it!
Yeah, and America also. Everyone's on their bubble, it's just the matter of whom will pop first.
Have been waiting for that for ages also. Starting to get really tired of all these rankings putting thing past germany or france, whilst the eu is an economic bloc
A licensed accountant working for one of the big real estate developer once told us , even if he spend no money at all , he cannot afford one of the condos the company is selling. The condo is 2 mil HKD , roughly 263k USD , so you can imagine the real situation there. And he is already considered a "middle-class" there. And that was 2018.
Perhaps when checking GDP we can reasonably treat trailing zeros as a measure of imprecision/inaccuracy/incompleteness of the figures.
To add to what the others said, there is a simpler solution: include the error on any quoted number. For example, country A's GDP is $4,560,000,000 ± $10,000,000. This standard in "hard" sciences like physics, but often isn't done properly elsewhere. A number without an error is pretty meaningless, if you think about it, as the true value could be literally anything.
@Robert Beckman To further elaborate; The standard practice is that, if not specified, all displayed figures are assumed to be significant. Therefore, if writing in milliliters, the 'between 999.6 and 1000.4 ml' is the only correct interpretation of '1000ml'. However, if they wished to still use milliliters, but only were accurate to the nearest liter, then they would write it as '0.1e4 ml' (0.1 has 1 significant figure, and 'e4' means times 10000).
@Robert Beckman I see my mistake, its been a long time since I last encountered this stuff so I guess my memory was a bit off. thanks for spotting my mistakes before it could cause too much confusion.
@Andy that was my reference point and I wonder if the same can be said for a higher number of trailing zeros (one or two more perhaps). Maybe indicative of deliberate overestimation on the part of secretive institutions/countries
@Heathensauce I'm proud of you, son.
I used to trust your videos. How can you confidently say China's economy is half of what the IMF, World Bank, and UN all agreed on? And based on a single research paper that literally just assumes the officials have it in their best interest to lie? With such bold claims I expected more hard data, yet this video is riddled with theoretical projections that make almost 0 sense.
I'm just going to assume you know very few ordinary Chinese people cus their average income is DEFINITELY not $4500 a year 🤣
The author probably thinks the auditors at IMF, World Bank, UN etc are all idiots.
@Cooper P you actually think everyone else who have different opinion than yours are all propaganda? if that's the case you're better off living in a tiny little cave with the opinion of yours.
۩Textme۩..
@Cooper P Lol you are a clown. Just because you don’t agree with something, doesn’t mean it’s propaganda.
I bet you know tons of rural, extremely poor Chinese ppl... Why are there so many propaganda comments under every yt video about China? Do they at least pay you guys well?
During my career in manufacturing I learned that it is unwise to use the same statistics (eg freight car loadings) to measure a condition or trend and also to measure an individual''s or group of individuals' job performance.
Especially if you were caught shipping empty containers...
17:30
For GDP per capita, you should also adjust for the lower population that China has been found to have.
The re-worked GDP PC figure would still be much lower than $10.4k, but higher than $4.5k.
Whatever Chinese economy is it's great....we outsiders can't live without their exported items ...so even if it's inflated it's going great.... maybe at most it can be argued that normal Chinese citizens are actually worse than they said to be ...but as a whole full Chinese economy is in decent shape because of their export and capacity to produce goods at good quality with lowest price to serve the people
Nobody who calls themself a scientist would use a single data point to draw their conclusion. The light level data is just one point. It's highly dependent on a lot of factors, cultural, political and economic. You must have other data points to tease out the contributions of each factor.
For example, a culture which values privacy and builds high-rise residential buildings would be dark, because illumination would be hidden behind curtains. You'll only observe the exterior lights, which won't light up the entire building, just the gardens and walkways on the ground level. So a 6 story building any brighter than a 3 story one, even if it houses twice as many people.
Someone who cares about the real numbers (rather than writing an attention-grabbing headline) will confirm their findings by looking at the amount of power produced or transmitted. If you don't have official numbers, then look at the number and types of power plants, power lines, and transformers. Going a step further, you can check *those* numbers by looking at oil, coal and gas extracted or imported for thermal plants, and weather data for hydroelectricity. So on and so forth.
It's easy for China to fake one set of numbers. Much harder for them to fake all of the numbers in a way that still made sense. This is how audits are done. They don't have a time machine to go back and check what actually happened, they just check if *all* of the numbers match up.
As someone who has taught chemistry for the past 5+ years, thank you for going over precision vs. accuracy, and significant figures! Nice to see it being used outside of the traditional sciences.
Edit: precession to precision
@xia en Gao Those cases are from immigrant doctors from china and india.
@sheldoncooper0 Is that why a couple hundred thousand people in the USA die every year from wrong prescriptions? That's more than how many die from illegal drugs.
@sheldoncooper0 the lsvel of stupidity and trolling you show clearly indicates you're not a doctor. Precision is a formal measure of data and isn't used in surgery. You're using an informal definition of precise. Lol.
@Economics Explained China also built its own Space Station in 2 years, while it took 12 years and involved the US bullying many other nation for money + Russian tech to build ISS.
China is not only #1 economy, #1 in military and #1 in technology.
Oh, have you seen the articles describing US aircraft carriers as Sitting Ducks?
China did not even need hypersonic missiles to destroy US carriers, but they got them anyway.
Just a swarm of regular cruise missiles can easily sink US carriers, as this is no longer WW2.
In the world of drones, satellites, and GPS, surface ships cannot hide in the open sea anymore, their precise locations are all public information.
@Economics Explained Hello. I would like to work with you. Please, give me your contact details.
One caution with the "GDP per capita" numbers is that China is basically multiple countries in one. If you look at the coastal provinces (Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Fujian, Tianjin, Zhejiang, Guangdong), they have a GDP per capita similar to other advanced economies, especially if you adjust for PPP. Whereas the internal provinces have GDP per capita that hover around the poverty line.
@david consumer of math So, I am from china,Could you tell me what is internal passport?why you always created some Strange urban legend about China？
We do not reject criticism from outsiders, but it is just disgusting to fabricate lies to gain your own sense of superiority.
你们如果只是反中或者别的什么 那无所谓，作为竞争者，我们不排斥外人的批评，但是如果靠制造谎言来获得你们自己的优越感，这只是令人作呕。
@I couldn't think of a name It just you.image,not real, I live in china,Iam a chinese,if you consider educated and hospital,of course,difference is huge,but in other country like turkey,america,or mexico,Which depend on money.
As chinese we don't care what western said,after all,none country can develop
with the help of western economics.but some country have been into trouble.
We can refer to it, but we can never believe it completely，not only for us,but also for you,western is builted by lies and fraud.It's orginated in their history,Genocides and illegal occupation of indigenous lands, then brainwash indigenous people with religion and make them into slaves.
The economy is not fundamentally dependent on the service sector, but on manufacturing. More advanced production methods, higher efficiency and high-quality manufacturing are the basis of economic development. At least, we, the Chinese Communist Party, are strengthening the strength of China's manufacturing industry, so we support him.
@🇨🇳中国青年 plenty of people already do. 😂
@Rollo G 如果抹黑中国能让你心里好受些，那你就继续抹黑吧😂
I understand why China was ranked so high now. You use the same data sets for everyone. This question had been on my mind. Good video.
$17.7 trillion is impressive, considering China's economy was smaller than the UK's in 2005. China's continuous growth does seem too good to be true, especially as GDP growth shows they are still yet to experience a recession despite demographic and political problems.
They are yet to experience a recession because of long-term planning and learning from other nation's mistakes.
If you understand banking and credit creation it isnt too good to be true.
I watched the video on the light-paper and I pointed out over there that China with all its real estate developments, high-speed rail and, shall we say, high-intensity urbanism probably increased its light-output a lot MORE than a comparable economy in the respective time period.
What about putting the EU's economy on the leader board? Could be interesting 😛
I would like to see the ranking of Germany. You've ranked the 5 largest economies except for Germany. I'm guessing it'll get a 7.8 with "Stability and Confidence" being the lowest given the Ukraine war's impact on its political and economic climate.
۩Textme۩….
Hi economics explained team, I have been watching your channel
For a while and I am impressed in the way you explain complex economic terminology with simple example but the video about US economy and China economy seems to be fully biased and on my view I feel it’s one sided
🤓☝️ erm video man USA looks good on your chart and it’s making me mad pls change this”
Great video. Money and Macro did a good in depth video covering different aspects of the same thing. They spent more time analyzing the light usage to gdp data and found that it was good use of data even if it’s not entirely accurate. But even the original paper said that his light data showing 60% lower gdp in China doesn’t mean the 60% is entirely accurate. It just gives you an idea of how exaggerated the gdp data likely is. I’ve traveled China a few times and noticed that city cores of major cities look rich or middle class but outer parts of the city are as poor as typical Mexico (also traveled it) and rural areas are African level poor. Rural in the context of China can mean a town of 300,000!
@Jay Bee ". I just said electricity consumption can’t be used to judge if a country is lying about their economy or not." That's literally the point of PEER reviewed research to demonstrate how a country likely is lying about their GDP using LIGHTS (not electricity consumption).
" You don’t need much electricity if you are pumping out minerals resources, and selling it to make money and grow your economy" I don't think you understand the importance of the lights. The lights signal increase wealth of the people. Poorer countries have fewer lights which can take many forms -- fewer street lights, fewer commercial centers, etc. There is some variation due to many factors discussed in the M&M video but it gets you a rough estimate. So if China was 60% below, than it's true GDP is likely not going to be anywhere near the reported GDP. It doesnt mean it's exactly 60% below -- think more like it's 60% below give or take 10%pts (i.e. 50-70% below) with 95% confidence.
@HomerOJSimpson I am not working for China. I just said electricity consumption can’t be used to judge if a country is lying about their economy or not. You don’t need much electricity if you are pumping out minerals resources, and selling it to make money and grow your economy. In China’s case they might be lying but that isn’t the case for resource dependent economies especially in Africa.
@Jay Bee “using electricity consumption is lying”. Well, they didn’t use electrify consumption but amount of light so you’re wrong. And the study was conducted then peer reviewed by experts and not someone working for Beijing like you.
@HomerOJSimpson research done by some guy on Clip-Share . Lol
@HomerOJSimpson umm USA manipulation of data is well known fact honey boo
I mean number can be made up but if you live in China, you can see the life change so fast, my parent started out studying under no electricity now travel the world in a whimp. 2 decades ago, people with car consider rich now they just a normal thing.
And yet a big portion of the population is impoverished and poor. You can't give your anecdote and make a general statement especially since you're already at an advantage the fact that you can access the internet. Also obviously the examples you gave are true for everyone because technology advanced globally. Cars are more accessible now compared to the past.
I went to other Asian countries and I can tell you they also change so fast as well.
If you watch some interview of big investors asking "What if North Korea open theirs market?"
You can expect the same things.
The problem with China is it's all in the surface, face value like fire hydrant reveal recently that doesn't connect water pump. Many achievement is for look only and not functional like lots of tofu projects.
@Em 看看美国的债务 32万亿 😱😱
@निद्रालुजो SLEEPY JOE you can just lie your way to relevancy through abusing debt.
@Kobe A5 Wagyu yes, that multiple home issue is what’s causing a global real estate crisis right now.
Hey EE thanks for the shout-out, which you really didn't have to do since I do not have a monopoly on topics :)
Meh . Fake news
Wen Collab? xD
۩Textme۩.
Why not use your original score and the adjusted score in the rankings going forward? At the end you mentioned you will keep Chinas original score going forward because many other countries also misreport economic data. But among the countries you have near the top, China is alone on how much they manipulate it. And considering their manipulation is estimated to be as much as over 2x the actual gdp data, it would make sense to keep both scores going forward.
@Ausrius Didziokas what not anymore?
Not anymore
@HomerOJSimpson china's growth is biggest in the world
Dude u are so jealous of china
U still cannot prove China wrong .
@Lawrence the poster you are replying to is likely an astorturfer - he engages in large threads with anti-china comments under any video even remotely related to china, he posts the same arguments over and over again and rejects or pretends he doesnt see any evidence that goes against his narrative. He is a bot do not engage with him. He has been caught in the act under multiple videos doing this and in a thread under another video he was exposed as posting from Eglin Airforce Base
Gotta say, that high ranking for New Zealand is looking increasingly silly.
I get that social-democratic minded economists like the current NZ economy-government, but come on, New Zealand is not an economic high-flier in any way. It has a high cost of living, with many young New Zealanders leaving for Australia and elsewhere.
@Lee I think you should do some basic research before commenting further.
But even Australia is not doing that well. The mining industry is literally tanking their entire economy.
One thing you haven't considered: due to the portion of SOEs in China, GDP can go up by, for example, lending more money between SOEs (on paper), selling things (on paper).
@Tritium Also learn what bridge to nowhere means. wumao.
@Tritium I never aid it wouldn't, just like all the tofu projects.
They will build just for show and the dumb one is you to think the bridge will not collapse.
@John Wong Of course their bridges will increase GDP. That's the whole point of infrastructure you're too dumb to notice.
Sounds more like your money and prices you brag about only to make less in the real.
Or building bridge to nowhere, which a lot of projects just to increase GDP.
Regarding the section about light emission correlating with economic output: that’s actually not what the paper says. The idea is that GROWTH of light output over time is highly correlated with economic growth, and thus you can use it to determine whether someone is cooking the books regarding their economy. There is not much room for discretion on this one, as it just compares historical nighttime maps to make approximate guesses about the amount of growth a country has experienced.
Hundreds of world class and renowned academics, economists analysts, banks, investment funds and other institutions spend their careers continuously combing through China statistics with a fine comb. Far more than most countries. The figures are well within any tolerance.
Really great video, as always. I would like to se a collaboration between EE and M&M, i think that could be fun or maybe just EE making a vist on the M&M talks. And one more thing I hope you see this EE. I would like to see Denmark (I'm Danish) on the country leader board list. You have talked about all the other nordic contries (Island, Sweden and Norway), I know we a not Norway (But it's our oile "national joke"). Anyway keep the good work, I really enjoy your video's :D
I love any Economics Explained video where you get to say "data" is several times.
Another great, informative and easy to understand video! Not to mention the best one I've seen yet explaining China's GDP, using level headed tone and without bias or inflammatory language found in most content about China.
@kallashnykov all your comments are pro-communist anti-western brainwashed nonsense though
I can only see bias in this video
This video is far from informative or accurate. It's a bunch of cheap propaganda that no real economist would believe lol.
1990. The Economist. China's economy has come to a
halt.
1996. The Economist. China's economy will face a hard
landing
1998. The Economist: China's economy entering a
dangerous period of sluggish growth.
1999. Bank of Canada: Likelihood of a hard landing for
the Chinese economy.
2000. Chicago Tribune: China currency move nails hard
landing risk coffin.
2001. Wilbanks, Smith & Thomas: A hard landing in
China.
2002. Westchester University: China Anxiously Seeks a
Soft Economic Landing
2003. KWR International: How to find a soft landing if
China..
2004. The Economist: The great fall of China?
2005. Nouriel Roubini: The Risk of a Hard Landing in
China
2006. International Economy: Can China Achieve a Soft
Landing?
2007. TIME: Is China's Economy Overheating? Can China
avoid a hard landing?
2008. Forbes: Hard Landing In China?
2009. Fortune: China's hard landing. China must find a
way to recover.
2010. Nouriel Roubini: Hard landing coming in China.
2011. Business Insider: A Chinese
2012. American Interest: Dismal Economic News from
China: A Hard Landing
2013. Zero Hedge: A Hard Landing In China
2014. CNBC: A hard landing in China.
2015. Forbes: Congratulations, You Got Yourself A
Chinese Hard Landing..
2016. The Economist: Hard landing looms for China
2017. National Interest: Is China's Economy Going To
Crash?
2020. Economics Explained: The Scary Solution to the
Chinese Debt Crisis
2021. Global Economics: Has China's Downfall Started?
2022. Cathie Wood: China's COLLAPSE Is FAR Worse
Than You Think
2022. Business Basics: China's Economic Crisis, GDP is
Crashing, Protests Everywhere. China's financial crisis is
Here.
Fxck the MSM
With all the protest happening in china right now, shouldn't we be lowering the "Stability and Confidence" part of the leader board score? I'm surprised to see that protests weren't even mentioned in the video at all, given that it's the most significant thing happening in the nation right now.
great video, now i really really want one about germanys economy, with the ranking at the end of course :)
✍🏻❤️The truth is Making money is an action. Keeping money is behavior. Growing money is knowledge.
I'm so happy for taking the bold step in investing a little start up capital with after a week I received my profits to my bank
This is the first time I'm meeting someone real, l just messaged him, thank so much
@Austin47 👈🏻
He's active on tele-gram👇🏾
To be honest I invested as low as $1,000 because I was skeptical initially. Receiving my profit gave me more confidence to reinvest higher.
Great content as usual
Oh I have no qualms about admitting how much my life is improved by Chinese labor. I just wish the workers were paid adequately for their contribution. Yes, even if that means phones get way more expensive. I don't care. I'm not the "average consumer" and I don't believe in "rational economic actors" anyway.
"That appoints collected broadly and in large numbers." No I know that's not a joke, because economists have no sense of humor. But the large numbers bit can't go unnoticed.
Awesome video. One country that sticks outs as a sore thumb economically is Nigeria, as there are multiple reports of it having a puppy government for Shell (a lot of them have flown under the radar), with the subsequent envirnonmental crises and corruption to facilitate such a power move by a big company putting strain on the average person living there, such a video would not necessarily be in line with your series of ranking a country's economy. I still however think it would be awesome content from you especially given your research and knowledge and you do not have to specifically focus on the activities of Shell on the country. Cheers!
۩Textme۩
Overstatement of output was a major cause of the Great Leap Forward.
There's a documentary called End of the Line. Biologists were trying to find out why global figures showed fishing catches going up when, examined locally, it seemed most fish populations were in decline.
From the documentary: "For every part of the world, the reporting was right except for Chinese waters .... the Chinese figures could not be right. They were just made up."
Also from documentary: "We concluded that they were so biased upward that if you corrected for this effect, the world catch would not be increasing but decreasing."
One nation's falsified reports were overblown enough to completely skew the statistical data of the entire planet. Let that sink in.
Here's a question: if China's economic growth is so robust, why do they send so much capital out of the country (eg, purchase US farmland, buy US gov't debt, buy US food corporations, etc) rather than reinvest it domestically where there greater returns should theoretically be found? I don't have the answer, but a suggestion would be that its actual growth is much less than stated.
@Ben W They have a lot of accumulated wealth derived from past growth. but in economics it is always a question of what is going to happen=not what has happened
if china's economic growth is not so robust, where do they get so much captial to send out of the country, you dont' see that much investment from African countires , dont you
@Jim Cronin Just wondering, do you get most of your news from US, UK sponsored mainstream media sources? The reality is that most of these reports deliberately exaggerate the so called "human rights violations" and often hires US based "researchers" or even human rights groups to manufacture a narrative that is not backed by actual evidence on the ground.
@rncmv Perhaps you have reasons to state that China is not a totalitarian society, but I cannot see them. I see ethnic cleansing, oppression of Tibet, curtailment of religious freedom, inventing and then worldwide spreading of COVID 19, forced abortions and sterilizations, welding people inside their apartments for months with no provocation, Belt & Road, Hong Kong crackdown, TikTok, Spratley Islands appropriation, etc. Need I continue?
@Jim Cronin "totalitarian society" does not apply on China; the former USSR was a totalitarian society, for example
Just wondering why we have been criticized china‘s lie on economic Statistics for so long, and China is still standing up and not collapsing, and see like some countries we’d been praised but their economy finally collapsed, anyone tell me why?
@Harry Wu China's guilt in America's eyes is China outgrowing and surpassing themselves in a lot of fields.
I'm sure if China remained poor and remained a sweatshop to make cheap junk for the West, then suddenly America would be praising how humane and good the Chinese government is.
@insertnamehere ok anti-China has been American goal for so long, I guess since the end of Soviet union, but 911 and American's wars in ME, held back Anti-China movement to later on til Trump's appearance.
lol according to 1000 videos on youtube China collapsed in 30 days, 6 months ago. I'm sure all those videos have nothing to do with USA's 500 million dollar bill to smear anti-China "propaganda".
China has enough size to keep lying for a long time.
Their industrial capabilities is no joke as proved by real goods they produced. BUT, do their economic number actually reflect reality or just like how other communist state that fudge number from down to the top
Due to heavy state interference they've done their best to damage control and keep their economy from collapsing but if nothing changes they're on their way to a collapse. It's just happening slower.
Amazing video and thank you for breaking it down!!
Despite the economic downturn, I'm so happy😊I have been earning $ 60,000 returns from my $7,000 investment every 12days
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Regarding precision: Its amusing that Olympic gymnastics are scored to a thousandths (.000) of a point, yet Olympic running events are only measured to a hundredth (.00) of a second. Apparently personal opinion can be measured with more precision than something as finicky as time. 😂
You're using points vs seconds. Completely different things. Getting times that are the same to a hundredth of a second is highly improbable and would likely not make a difference. But getting averages that would be close to a thousandth is possible and easy to measure.
۩Textme۩..
To those wondering, Statistical Capacity Score doesn't measure scores of USA and western Europe, because their system is perfect. Of course I'm being ironic, 'cause this is a VERY colonial view of the world . This 'Score' is just a 'scientific/technical' excuse of perpetuate prejudice over peripheric countries.
I tend to believe this numbers are close enough because I live in a country of 6-7k usd per capita so there is not way Chinese have less than that and I'm comparing rural areas, poor areas, salaries, etc.
9 trillion from 17 trillion seems too far out lol. I was expecting around 11 to 12 trillion for China real gdp.
Nahh, they're authoritarian they pretty much lie as much as they want
I believe shipping container reports are also something that people use to gauge China’s manufacturing, most shipping companies are western based
You make great content, but could please do a video on Estonia!
it can be more clear if someone can stop saying just China as long as the govts of China make totally different contributions to this progress. Provincial govt as I heard around would adjust their data to a smoother line than the normal one as they believe their leaders would favor those who can make substantial growth. Some had it that the stats during 1980 and 1992 can be extremely underestimated because at that time the provincial governments only need to hand up a GDP-based quota to Beijing. It is just like in a company everyone always makes figures favorable for themselves but your boss finds everyone is making figures false for the company. So I believe this is not a lie but more like a systematic error.
Actually, the rich province in China will say the GDP number smaller than is actually to be，Because smaller number can decreased Tax，And the poor province in China will enlarge the number.
۩Textme۩
Great video that provides important insights on the background to this question. The two sources used are well researched, however I do believe they only show one side of the story. China’s GDP is extremely complex, and you can find just as much research papers supporting that it is actually bigger than official figures. A 200 page research paper published from the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded that there are key areas within the calculation of GDP that China does not align with international standards (specifically inputted rent) which results in total GDP to actually be ~12% understated. This paper also makes reference to your first paper from Holz.
Source: CSIS, Broken Abacus (AUTHORS Daniel H. Rosen, Beibei Bao; FOREWORD Carsten Holz)
Another example is by the National Bureau of Economic Research published in 2017 which uses the same method (Night time lights) as the second paper you referenced, and concluded that China’s GDP is also understated.
Source: NBER paper w23323 (Hunter Clark, Maxim Pinkovskiy & Xavier Sala-i-Martin)
There are plenty of other well researched papers that support this, and all this is not even getting into the topic of PPP (which the CIA notes is the better measurement of China’s economy), and puts China well ahead in GDP rankings (and is already the largest economy in the world)
Source: Any CIA factbook website footnote on China PPP vs GDP
Overall I think this video is well researched, but the topic is much more complex. There’s an ocean of research on this topic that argue both sides with plenty to dispute the assertion that China is inflating GDP figures, so the conclusion made that China’s GDP is only $9 Trillion is an extremely unlikely. Great video overall.
The light pollution method of measuring GDP was meaningful 20y ago, but now is way out of whack. For example I live in Bulgaria, in the EU. On a recent night photo of Eastern Europe from space showing how dark Ukraine is (due to Russian terrorism) compared to countries around it, I noticed Bulgaria is also relatively darker compared to say Serbia. Except Bulgaria has higher GDP then Serbia so why would it be darker. Well electricity is way more expensive in Bulgaria then in Serbia and also Bulgaria has had access to EU infrastructure funds, so the vast majority of the lighting infrastructure in Bulgaria has been upgraded in the past 20y to be directed down(where it matters) and be energy efficient(LED lamps etc.). There is this situation that the poorest country in the EU may have one of the most efficient night lighting networks in the EU, precisely because the incentive was higher to update those resources so they won't cost much.
I would imagine that different regions of China would have vastly different lighting development level too.
I’m only a few minutes in but is this about the “night-light” study…
Edit: it was, that’s a very interesting study I’m glad you talked more about it.
Great attempt on the Chinese names, however I feel you (like many in the West) give China the benefit of the doubt.
Awesome video! Do you think you will respond to Money in Macro's video about China's GDP being up to 50% lower?
Edit: Welp... I feel like a clown. Didn't realize you mentioned it later in the video lol
@Sentient Blob 😃 我们中国还是非洲水平！请别关注我们我们每年只有1块钱
The US don't think so. Otherwise they won't be so paranoid about China.
@Jhamil AntezanaThe study apparently accounted for a lot of potential variables. Not saying that all variables were accounted for or that all of them were accounted correctly, but even if we’re giving a lot of leeway to china it’s gdp is still probably like 40-30% lower than reported. That makes all the problems it’s facing worse and it weakens it’s stance against the US
@Jhamil Antezana jajaja bro por que respondes en español de repente
@Jhamil Antezana
Something tells me you're South American.
When your economy is so small its used as a figure to represent the variance of Australia GDP
Still in the WC though, so take that Australia!
۩Textme۩….
Great video! Well done
Recent years, the GDP is no more the evaluation of local government, instead the less people under poverty line becomes the evaluation. That's why the list of new 5-year goals for the nation does not mention GDP figures anymore.
How Much Does China Lie About Its Economic Statistics?
China: Yes.
I agree some numbers are inflated but the reasoning that officials must present pretty statistics to please their superiors isn't a reason that holds much ground in the current system.
The fake production numbers existed in highly planned economies where government input/access to credit were significantly limited. While China remains a "socialist" country, I do not think the same could be said about its economy.
When GDP is grown by ever increasing investment figures, government entities will be have the means and ability to borrow funds to generate growth. Greater investment results in a cycle or greater savings and lower consumption. This causes an issue of over-investment which can be seen in the composition of China's most valuable industry sector being electric utilities (e.g. dams & energy infrastructure)
The figures are likely to be within an acceptable confidence interval, but the quality of growth is problematic (LT). So maybe its not the numbers are totally fake, but that the numbers have a high probability that they do no represent a long-term sustainable way of development.
These measures are complex tho, even US GDP stats which has a much higher consumption component could argue whether the average American household is worth their current high-leverage ratios.
Just my take on it, still got plenty of studies to go through rn
if economy of a country is not socialist, the country itself is not socialist either; there is nothing else in "socialism" except for economy; in short: socialism is an economic system, same as capitalism
9:39 If the growth rate is always over-estimated by, say, 1% for 25 years. Take, for example, 6% and 7%. After 25 years, 1.07^25=5.4274, 1.06^25=4.2919. You think people can not tell the difference? There cannot be so many fools.
They always think everyone else are idiots lol.
The highway traffic junction at 1:29 is not China, it is the Wat Salud interchange in Thailand, south east of Bangkok. Not really relevant to the story perhaps, but although I really live this channel, I regret it never actually shows actually interesting footage. It is basically a podcast that is more expensive to make but perhaps with a bigger audience than when just published on i tunes.
[Edit] and then in the very last minute he plugs his new Spotify channel lol. I didn't know that, but given what I wrote above that makes perfect sense 😄
Remember boiz, it's wiser to overestimate an enemy rather than to underestimate. Let's just overestimate China so we can be better prepared when there's that 1% chance that they ain't lying
Good man for shouting out money and macro! 👍
4:15 Hey mate, just to let you know it's not the measurement techniques. The difference between IMF and World Bank is because they are two different years (EDIT: it's actually three). The IMF figure you are reporting is the 2022 year, World Bank is 2021. There are global standards involved in measuring GDP, aka the 2008 SNA and they are the same for both that's because they are not doing the measuring, they are using the data collected by the statistical agency for that country. In Australia's case that's the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Differences are more likely due to the conversion to USD (using end of period, or average conversion rate, or whatever) and/or the conversion from financial year to calendar years, rather than anything measurement related. The calendar year conversion is important, because Australian annual GDP is reported on financial year basis, aka July-June.
@Bram Heerebout It is the same agency's numbers, it's *three* different years (as another the poster above noted). So, I don't think his point does stand in this case. It's actually misleading by suggesting they are collected by three different agencies (it's extremely labor intensive to collect national statistics, even in a tiny country - and an outside agency wouldn't be able to access the granularity of data required - for reasons of privacy, national security, etc) and that the reason is measurement techniques. Later in the video he talks about how a national statistical agency might not want to fix errors, but revisions are very common and anyone using the data needs to be aware of it, and more critically should use the latest published data even for earlier years to ensure can be compared. The BEA goes into detail here: apps.bea.gov/scb/2021/01-january/0121-revisions-to-gdp-gdi.htm
So it I read your comment correctly, you caught an important mistake - comparing two different years - but his point still stands - even based on the same measurements different agencies will publish different numbers, even for well organized Western countries.
@charlie pearce :D
Take deep breaths and be kind to kittens....
Finally someone points that out. If we want to be serious in using data, we need to understand how they are generated. Economics suffers from people that have fancy discourse but don’t really understand.
is doing now. And also i am curious where would Poland rank on your National economy leaderboard
can you make all fake gdp comparison between country like japan usa china ireland england etc?
I have lived in a small county in Shaanxi Province, China, for 20 years. Our standard of living has more than doubled. In the 1980s my parents lived in mud and brick houses that you can't even see if you go to the countryside now. I don't believe in statistics. I only believe in my own experience.
Corruption in China, it's been known to happen. Trololololol. This made my day.
It’s a human quality, share by 8 billion humans. Welcome to planet earth.
i like your videos, but have 1 suggestion to add national/government/corporate debt to your equation. Japan's economy on a 4th place make your chart kinda ... unreliable, in my view. just a thought.
۩Textme۩….
I’m doing a research paper on China so these videos coming out perfect time
@Richard Kenneth Eng yea I know I use the student library for sources scholarly journals
I'm afraid you'll get a D- if you rely on these sources.
Thanks 4 a Great Report! Another Great Done!!
Of course, Economic Estimates are exactly that; Estimates!
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However, ccp isn't "estimating" they are simply not even try to give an estimate! Their economy is max! 50% of stated!! Thus, Japan is even Bigger, as their unofficial one isn't even being seen!!
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Qs? If 2-300M servants aren't working, due to own made C19-Lock-Downs, plus Export to US down 40%, plus WEstern Diversification of at least 10-20% of their production elsewhere in Asia, Latin America; and ccp is still seeing a Growing GD!!??
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If a WEstern Nation had 20-30% of population not producing anything for 1 year, and export to other nations is down, even by 10-20%, plus 10-20% of production Gone(!), to other nations, and we still say our GDP is Growing, most Stupid Non-Economist would Understand it isn't true!!!
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Currently, ccp economy is in REALity, with even Own given, other types of statistics, Exposing a GDP Decline of.Double Digits, and at least 10% in only 2-3 years, due to C-19 restriction years!
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Further, not mention the Speed Train Economic Disaster with overall a 20% capacity, which is even a Bigger Bubble than their House Production Bubble, where 30-50% of Capacity is unused, while Millions are still waiting for their own 1st apartment!!
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The ccp Economy is in REAL fact as Good as the FTX Scam, but on a Nation level!!!
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Your Program are Great, but in this case you only touch the ccp economy surface, while the Full True Economic picture = FTX IMPLOSION!!!
*Now with the recent economy, To get Financial FREEDOM you have to be making money while you're asleep.*
Why would you give China a 6 on leadership? From what I have been reading the stability of China's economic output is at real risk. Investors like countries with legal systems they can work with and in China the government can just say no to that. Look at what has happened with many of its organizations, Alibaba, Didi, Ten Cent. None of them were safe from the Chinese system.
Thanks for your videos. Can you share your Economics explained national leaderboard on Google spreadsheets? (Google Sheets)
Despite the economic downturn,I'm so happy☺️. I have been earning $ 60,200 returns from my $7,000 investment every 13days.
The truth is with this recent economy Everyone needs more than there salary to be financially stable. The the best thing to do with your money is to lnvest it rightly because money left for saving always end up used with no returns..
Paris is literally called "The City of Light". Probably not the best example for low light output.
0:15 Dude, it is more like 1/6 of the world population... We have 8 billion people on earth now and 1.4 /8 is much closer to 1/6 than 1/5 .
If there is high demand on a countries energy grid, the government would encourage people to shut off unnecessary lights at night.
"trickiced you into learning about analytics" well played, well played.
Did u ever do a vid about Luxembourg love your videos and would love to see one of that small nation.
Still waiting for Norway somewhere on that leader board :)
One party system may not be bad. Take life expectancy of both China and US as example. In 1950 China life expectancy is about 38 vs US 68. After 71 years, in 2021 China life expectancy is 78.2 vs US 76.1( latest figure by CDC , US life expectancy dropped by 3 in 2020-2021 period from 79.1 originally). China expectancy increase by 40 years while US increase by 8 years only. China life expectancy increase 5 time faster than US.
Also Look at health care by comparing MMA rate( maternal mortality rate): in 1950 China maternal mortality is 1500 women death per 100,000 birth vs US 100 women death per 100,000 births. In 2021, China MMA is 16.1 vs US 23.8 per 100,000 (the lower the number , the better health care service level) .
Infant mortality rate: in 1950 China infant mortality is 195 death per 1000 birth vs US 26.8 death per 1000 births. In 2021, China infant mortality rate drop to 5 per 1000 vs US 5.4 per 1000 birth.
In fact among top 10 population countries, China’s life expectancy is longest 78.2 years old vs US 76.1 and India 70, Indonesia 71.7, Pakistan 67.3, Brazil 75.9, Nigeria 54.7, Bangladesh 72.6, Russia 73.1, Mexico 75.
And people in China retire at 55 years old on average to access pension. About 12 years earlier than US's 67 years requirement while some countries may not have pension at all. It means an American need work extra 40*52*12=25,000 hrs in his life than an average person in China. It also means an American only has 9 years to enjoy retirement while an average person in China has 22 years to enjoy retirement.
Also it is not means or asset tested when access pension in China. It means you get your pension monthly even you stay overseas, are a multi-millionaire or have another job after retirement.
Singapore is another example of one party system. Its gdp is highest among Asia.
Your Chi'ner to China transition is impressive. You can apply it to dat'er too. Edit - Actually never mind you did quite well second half.
۩Textme۩
Something just beautiful about 6:30 . It looks like something id try to build in Cities: Skylines
Believe certain ideologies encourage, enable, and extort inexact numbers.
Ah classic pitfall for any authoritarian regime. Everything become Potemkin Village and even they themselves can't understand what's really going on.
Please put your sources in the description of the video. That way it is easier for us to go back and look at them.
Love your videos
I love and respect you and the content you make but I gotta say: as. Californian I can't help but laugh everytime you say data. I swear it sounds like you're saying "dah-dar," or "dah-tah." You do you though, I'm going to still watch and support regardless.
That is a very interesting discussion, so thanks for that. Without meaning to dispute any of it, I have a few comments
*The title: "How Much Does China Lie About Its Economic Statistics?"
The answer is, based on this video, that China - as a national entity - does *not* lie about its economic statistics. It rather has poor quality data collection. The fact that Li Keqiang, who has a Master Of Economics, said what he said, indicates fairly strongly that it isn't China - the nation - misrepresenting economic data. Central planning, even at Politburo level, is dealing with the same problem as everyone else. Yet, when cynics say 'You can't trust Chinese data' the allegation is that they are fraudulently altered, not simply deficient.
*Who cares anyway? Even if economic data were, hypothetically, fraudulently altered, you have to ask who that actually affects? The only point of doing so I can imagine is, as to which referred, for propagandistic use by authoritarian government. But even that is a stretch. China has MANY ways of controlling its population, and I am dubious that the apparent docility thereof has much if anything, to do with a perception that per capita wealth is increasing.
For anyone else on the planet, the accuracy of economic stats makes no difference at all, other than creating lists of general interest. Whether one buys from China, sells to China, invests in China, your decisions are based on other factors, not some perusal of the GDP, ex/im, or credit numbers. Other factors are.
*One aspect, and I would suggest the most important for economic stats, was not touched on: trend. When you look at, say, employment data, the actual number of people with a job, or not, or whatever, may get attention in the tabloids, but is really of very little importance. From the point of view of decision making and comparison, changes and trends are important. That being the case, as long as Chinese data are equally defective one period to the next, they are likely just as useful anyway.
In the case of China, there are soooooooo many policy based distortions in the economy, eg staggering over construction of home units, equally staggering over supply of huge but unneeded infrastructure projects, that some wonky economic stats are hardly an issue! Nor would accurate ones make any difference, as the purpose of these projects is to create jobs (which they of course do), and foster industry and domestic consumption. For the ROW, I feel quite sure Fortescue Metal doesn't hang off Chinese economic data. Twiggy is just looking at how much iron ore they are buying. And in that regard, as with all exporters to China of anything, politics and exogenous real world events (hey, heard of covid!?), and so on, are what really makes a difference to the decision process.
Actually GDP growth figure is manipulated to lower levels in China rather than the other way round
Right, because Australia is the most perfect example of everything on the planet. 🙄
۩Textme۩.
I think at this point EA games are more trusted than Chinese statistics.
@G There were 150,000 soldiers stationed there other than the native population, it's even confirmed by Japan's own data
Includes Chinese wartime statistics, something most people will not admit. How do you kill 300,000 in a city thats proven to have a population of 200,000 in 1937?
Ouch
5:22 For the love of god, please don't round it until you get to the final answer. If you're rounding at every step then you will potentially have huge errors.
I'm your king
@Jay Cie Standard practice in sciences is to round at the end, to least accurate digit/decimal in the data when operations of additive (addition/subtraction) or to round to the next factor of 10 whenever there are non-additive operations (multiplication/division/etc). Its not arbitrary. How you round is a product of the data itself.
No you actually should. Rounding to the millions place when you are talking about trillions is just a bad move. Rounding to the billions place means that the real number is within a half billion more or less, The error is at most .05% or if you compounded it 100 times a range of 95.12%-105.13% of the actual figure. That is far better than the acceptable amount of error in the methodology.
You can round off like that when - with the data itself - it is not possible to be so precise, which makes it more inaccurate to not round it off. Also, he is not talking about every step, probably just the answer.
But for the most part you're right ofcourse!
I think that one thing this video makes clear is that economists - even large, important organizations of them - aren't necessarily good statisticians. :)
Another point of interest is the Debt to GDP ratio. According to World Economics Research, China's Debt to GDP ratio is 58.7%. Depending on how that percentage is calculated as well as implementing the different assumption, it could be above 100%. It would be a lot closer to the United States' Debt to GDP ratio.
This could be worrying since China is still in the development stage. But then again, China's banks are state run so I'm not sure how exactly this may affect them.
China's debt is not the same as debt from western countries. China doesn't borrow money from external institutions and does not raise money through capital markets. China doesn't owe money to anyone outside of China and its debt is actually from the state banks which is government's money. On the other hand, the US debt is real and it pays billions in interest to countries like China that holds its debts.
I can feel your social credit going into the negatives...
Thanks, mate!
A very informative video. Your production quality has only been heightened since I started following you, glad to see it!
Fair to say that every government lies about its economic success to some degree - but when there's no opposition or critical media: those lies can go uncorrected and unchallenged.
@Frozen Bus Channel 魔雪巴士頻道 who told you that?
Who told you there is no opposition or critical media?
This is the opposite of what happens in African economies. African countries have problems with getting accurate economic measurements. I remember Nigeria’s GDP almost doubled in 2014 because the government didn’t keep up with the economic data for years. Ghana had a 50 percent jump in GDP, Tanzania, Kenya also had high increase in their gdp rebasing. African government don’t like to acknowledge their economic growth so they can get more financial assistance from foreign countries.
You have to travel to China and see their buildings, hydro dams, subways, shopping malls, roads and airports. See how much it costs to buy food and fuel for your car. Seeing is believing.
@Frozen Bus Channel 魔雪巴士頻道 i mean if the new calc are to be believed, then china GDP per capita would be lower than India in PPP terms and anyone that's visited both nations knows that's just absurd, the diff is b/w 1st and 3rd world. even the rural areas of china have a better infrastructure,power, standard of living, and cleanliness than metro Mumbai which is India's powerhouse
... I didn't even realize it was a question.
It's like asking if there's income inequality problems in the US. Unless you are an idiot or a propagandist, the answer is yes.