'Discovered' GDP reveals exciting new opportunities

Opinion / You Nuo

 'Discovered' GDP reveals exciting new opportunities
By You Nuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-12-26 05:36

Many lessons can be drawn from the National Bureau of Statistics'
revision of China's GDP (of 2004) last week, which enlarged the
previously reported figure by 16.8 per cent, to mainly represent the more
than 2 trillion yuan (US$247 billion) of added value from the service
industries.

One quick observation, at least by Saturday night, is that while Beijing
may be over the moon about its newly discovered proportion, Shanghai, the
largest service city of the Chinese mainland, remains over-modest and its
media seem to have no interest in providing additional information about
the national revision.

As if intended as a Christmas gift to the residents of the Chinese
capital city, Beijing's media, from morning newspapers to evening radio
talk shows, were filled with the joyful report that the city's 2004 GDP
was revised up more than 40 per cent. On a per capita basis, that would
lead to a change from US$3,513 to US$4,970.

"So it turns out we're living in a city of US$5,000 per capita GDP now,"
my cab driver sighed when we heard the news on the radio while caught in
a major jam. "No wonder the traffic is worse than ever."

The Beijing press claimed the city's per capita GDP to be the second
highest in the Chinese mainland, only beaten by Shanghai. But how large
is Shanghai's figure? Not a single source bothered to reveal this. Maybe
the editors think it is purely Shanghai's business.

But Shanghai's business is Beijing's business, because both cities are
part of China's business. So when I finally got home, I logged on to the
Internet to search for the Shanghai figure. I did it over and over again
until midnight and did not find a single source from Shanghai, either in
Chinese or in English, to discuss the change in the city's economy.

The local media were talking about the expansion of the airport,
completion of some new highways, a shortage of English-speaking
kindergarten teachers, and the change of names of some streets. But
surprisingly enough, none of them were talking about the change in its
economy's accounting.

There are, of course, many loftier goals to pursue in the world than just
GDP. Life in Shanghai is certainly much more colourful so is any other
city's than can be reflected by a set of dry figures. But so long as an
economy is measured by this accounting method, and accurate figures do
reflect a lot of significance for analytical persons, all Chinese cities
had better help their investors and merchants with timely updates of
economic information.

When the Beijing press made the claim that the capital has the second
highest per capita GDP in the Chinese mainland, most other cities had not
announced their local changes in reaction to the national revision of the
GDP.

Beijing's plausible fallacy is a result of what has yet to change in
China's statistical system, in which regional figures are always listed
in a province by province order.

The features of all cities, except for only a few, remain hopelessly
blurred even though some of the cities each have more than 10 million
residents and are important in their own ways.

The national statistical yearbooks contain only scanty information about
cities such as Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Suzhou, Xiamen, Qingdao and Dalian.
Elsewhere, their statistical data are seldom published and updated in
such a way as to satisfy managers of the electronic age. But those cities
are all increasingly familiar names for overseas business people today.

I remember reading from some Chinese sources saying, in the days when the
old accounting method still prevailed, that at least a dozen or so
southern cities had long passed Beijing and Shanghai in their per capita
GDP, Shenzhen, the city bordering Hong Kong, being on the top of the list.

The central government agency's GDP revision is admittedly a good,
responsible move.

But business people also want to know when they will no longer have to
rely on sporadic figures for piecing together any given Chinese city's
economic picture, instead of each city government's systematic reports
and updates.

Email: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/26/2005 page4)

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