Beijing Postpones Its Q3 GDP Release During National Meeting

Expert believes officials are still contemplating what is the 'right' data to please the party leadership

Chinese leader Xi Jinping gives a speech during the opening session of a 5-year Chinese Communist Party political conference in Beijing on Oct. 16, 2022. (Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images)

China delayed its regular release of third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) without an explanation.

Also postponed were several other economic indicators such as industrial production, fixed assets, real estate investment, and retail sales as shown on the schedule on the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) website updated on Oct. 17.

As the regime holds its national meeting of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the delay may be due to the undivided attention focused there.

Alicia Garcia-Herrero, chief economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis, commented on the delay of the data release: “No distraction during the party congress. Not even data. The question is when GDP will be published and what it means to the predictability of China’s official data in the future,” she said in an email exchange with the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times on Oct.18.

The Epoch Times contacted the NBS Data Consultation Department for an explanation for the delay. According to a person who answered the call, “No reason was given, but the data is re-scheduled to be announced at 9:30 a.m. on Oct. 24.”

A prominent Chinese economist in Beijing, who asked to remain anonymous, told The Epoch Times “they won’t give the real data.”

He believes that the delay is because authorities are still “contemplating” on the “right” data.

“They need the data that’s valuable to them, meaning that it would please the leader.”

Experts and economic institutions find that China's enterprise debt to GDP ratio is the highest in the world, with studies suggesting signs of the financial crisis have already appeared in the world's second-largest economy. (STR/AFP/GettyImages)

Economy is Badly Hurt

He blamed domestic policy and stagnant trade relations for hurting the Chinese economy.

“The domestic economy is a mess. The zero-COVID policy has seriously interrupted the economy, reduced the production efficiency, and burdened the populace with unreasonably high living costs,” he said.

He explained that mandatory daily PCR testing in many places has heavily increased the cost of living, both for the people and the regime.

“They went overboard with the prevention measures,” he said.

However, according to regime leader Xi Jinping, the strict zero-COVID policy isn’t likely to go away.

In his opening address at the Party’s national meeting on the 16th, Xi praised his zero-COVID policy as “an all-out people’s war to stop the spread of the virus.”

The Chinese real estate market shows how badly the Chinese economy has been hurt by the draconian policy.

Real estate sales have plunged by more than 20 percent across major cities in China as the latest data showed, despite Beijing’s efforts to shore up its struggling housing market with interest rate cuts for first-time home buyers and tax refunds for home sales.

Gu Xiaohua, Lin Yan, and Ruth Lee contributed to this report.