Costs of Fudging Statistics

Costs of Fudging Statistics
Employees work on an assembly line producing speakers at a factory in Fuyang in China's eastern Anhui Province on June 30, 2023. AFP via Getty Images
Ichiro Suzuki
Updated:
Commentary

China’s economic statistics can’t be taken at face value. This has been well understood among economists and investors for years. The country always tries to make them look better than they really are, reporting more or less inflated numbers. It’s been said that electricity-consumption numbers better represent the state of the Chinese economy than gross domestic product. Electricity numbers are more difficult to fudge than growth rates and, hence, closer to the truth, it is believed.

Ichiro Suzuki
Ichiro Suzuki
Author
Ichiro Suzuki is an advisory group member at Mayo Center for Asset Management at Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. He is formerly a global equity strategist with Nomura Asset Management in Tokyo, Japan. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and has his MBA from Darden School. He lives in Tokyo.
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