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Renminbi Series - China’s actual growth – many men many minds

"China might be mis-reporting its actual growth"....."Chinese growth could be far weaker"....."Data indicating much greater weakness in China"...These have been the lines of concern among analysts including us at FxWirePro. However, when this question is posed what is China's actual growth, it seems many men (+women), many minds.

  • According To latest from Bloomberg business, China could be growing something around 6.5% according to Bloomberg Intelligence economics, Barclays is way more pessimistic, predicting growth to be just above 5%. Lombard Street Research thinks is to be just around 3%, while Li Keqiang index calling it to be just about 2.8%.

Compared all these above estimates, official growth figure stands at 6.9%, highest of the lot.

So how much it actually matters?

Not much. Say if there has been a mis-reporting of the GDP figure, it doesn't seem to be a mistake, given Chinese authorities revised last year's growth to be 7.4%. Calculation can be wrong one time...yes but for a revised figure and for a government...doesn't seem likely at all.

So that brings us to the conspiracy theory...

China deliberately reporting a higher figure...if that is the case.....it is unlikely to change in the near term. Admitting to any conspiracy would lead to loss of credibility.

Similar can be said for different calculations method.

So what does matter?

What happens from here?

A hard landing....continued deterioration...stabilization...or recovery.

Concentrating too much on what could be the actual slowdown might lead to missing of the actual recovery in world's second largest economy.

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