What is happening to China's GDP statistics?

This paper argues that official Chinese statistics contain major exaggerations of real output growth beginning 1998. The standard data contain numerous inconsistencies. Chinese commentaries castigate widespread falsification at lower levels and question the autheticity of figures emanating from the central statistical authorities. The author speculates that cumulative GDP growth during 1997/2001 was no more one-third of official claims, and possibly much smaller.     

Export-led Growth: Application to China's Provinces, 1978–2001

China's economic development has in many ways taken the world by storm, and no part of the country has been left fully unaffected. Many attempts have been made to explain the sources of this rapid, yet uneven, development. Previous studies on the specific relationship between growing exports and economic growth provide important information on the issue, but results from individual provinces are lacking. To fill the gap, this paper reviews the basic empirical question defined by the export-led growth (ELG) hypothesis, i.e. whether growth in exports drives growth in GDP, at the provincial level. The ELG hypothesis is validated in 13 of the 27 provinces in the sample.     

China's growing but slowing inequality of household wealth, 2013–2018: A challenge to ‘common prosperity’?

By examining the period 2013–2018, this paper follows up a previous one which analysed the increase in the inequality of China's wealth per capita over the period 2002–2013. It finds that the Gini coefficient, having risen rapidly over the earlier period, continued to grow but did so more slowly in the later period, at the national level and in both urban and rural China. Counterfactual analysis identifies the lower rate of house price inflation as an important reason for the slowdown. Policies and policy options are examined, both directly on wealth inequality and indirectly through control of house price inflation. Nevertheless, the rising inequality of wealth per capita among households does indeed pose a challenge to the achievement of ‘common prosperity’ in China. It deserves more policy attention.     

Regional Divergence of per capita GDP in China: 1991–99

Using China's regional data from 1991 to 1999, this paper investigates inter-regional income inequalities. GMM estimation has been used to explore a dynamic panel data model based on the Solow growth model. We find that regions conditionally converge to their own steady states at an annual rate of 8%, indicating around 8 years for a region to halve the deviation from its balanced growth path. However, the panel data exploration of convergence could not explain the catching up phenomenon. To see whether poorer regions can grow faster than richer ones, sigma and absolute beta divergence have been employed. We find that when the regional income gap enlarges during the 1990s, the initially poor regions do not catch up with the initially rich regions.     

Measuring China's monetary sterilization and autonomy in the era of globalization: 1995–2005

This paper provides a cointegration analysis of incomplete monetary sterilization and autonomy in China when both financial controls and the exchange rate peg exist. According to an estimated long-run equilibrium relation, only 35 cents are sterilized for a yuan of foreign-exchange reserve that flows into China. In response to the movement in foreign-exchange reserves, M2 proves more endogenous than M1; and in the M2 elasticity model, as the forecast horizon extends, the domestic-credit component of the monetary base exhibits its significant endogeneity with respect to the foreign-asset component, whereas the endogeneity of the foreign-asset component also rises with respect to M2.     

China's oil product pricing mechanism: What role does it play in China's macroeconomy?

The oil product pricing mechanism is a regulation system that was introduced in the late 1990s to control the oil product prices in China. For the first time to our knowledge, we provide an empirical evaluation of this regulation system, with a particular focus on its role in China's macroeconomy. Based on monthly data between 2000 and 2013, we find that: (i) contrary to the general public's impression, the mechanism is ‘fair’ overall in the sense that it responds to the rise and fall of international oil price symmetrically; (ii) the effect of the mechanism on the Chinese economy, however, is very limited; and (iii) the limited effect of the mechanism holds for different levels of regulation during the studied period, suggesting that potential deregulation may have little impact on the economy.     

China's Trade Slowdown: Cyclical or Structural?

This paper analyzes whether the slowdown of China's trade in 2012–2015 was cyclical or structural, and further discusses the effects of structural factors, including trade structure, trade protectionism and global value chain participation. Using the national panel data from 2000 to 2015, based on the error correction model and import‐intensity‐adjusted demand model, our results show that the slowdown of China's trade growth in 2012–2015 was mainly a result of cyclical factors. Using 2000–2015 industry‐level data, we also find that the structure of trade goods had an inhibitory effect on the import slowdown but a positive effect on the export slowdown. Trade protectionism had an adverse effect on the trade growth slowdown. The global value chain participation marginally contributed to the slowdown in trade growth. Therefore, the impacts of structural factors on trade growth slowdown cannot be ignored, and related policies should receive greater attention from policy‐makers.     

英山:只要绿色GDP

湖北省英山县坚持保护生态促产业,发展产业壮经济的思路,大力发展无污染、低耗能、高效益的绿色环保工业,走出了一条要金山银山,更要绿水青山的可持续发展之路。     

Determinants of Real Chinese GDP 1978–2014

In 2014, the IMF reported that China became the largest economy in the world according to Purchasing Power Parity rates. This study aims to explain the Chinese economic miracle. It focuses on frequently suggested factors influencing China’s real gross domestic product (GDP), such as export promotion, exchange rate policy, and foreign direct investment (FDI). The paper employs the Bounds test of the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model to test for cointegration. Once cointegration is established, Granger Causality is investigated using the vector autoregressive model and the Toda and Yamamoto (1995) method. Two different combinations of the real macroeconomic variables exports, exchange rate, imports, and FDI were employed to examine Granger causal relationships. All explanatory variables, except for the exchange rate, were found to have plausible relationships with GDP. The exchange rate and GDP relationship was unexpected; a Renminbi appreciation was associated with an increase in GDP. To investigate this paradox, a third ARDL model was estimated with exports as the dependent variable and the exchange rate, world GDP, and FDI as the independent variables. In this model, we found evidence of cointegration and a plausible relationship between real exports and the real exchange rate. Exchange rate devaluation increased exports and thus indirectly increased GDP. Such findings help to resolve the unexpected results. Nonetheless, according to the Granger causality tests the established statistical evidence is rather weak. We found that both the exchange rate and FDI are no longer strong drivers of economic growth in China.     

Impact of the US–China trade war on resource allocation: Evidence from China's land supply

This study investigates the impact of the current United States (US)–China trade war on resource allocation, using monthly panel data at the city level; the data relate to the transfer of local government-controlled land from 2017 to 2019. The results show that the trade war significantly changed local governments' economic development strategies. As the trade war progressed, Chinese local governments shifted their attention to boosting the development of high-tech industries by significantly increasing the proportion of land supply for these industries. After the trade war, for every 1% increase in the US exports as a share of gross domestic product (GDP), land supply to high-tech industries increased by 0.25%. This effect is more prevalent in cities with more fiscal resources, a younger secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Municipal Committee, lower levels of public nationalism, and a larger share of foreign enterprises among exporters. These results are consistent with our assumption that the pressure generated by the US–China trade war has significantly increased the potential returns for local governments in terms of developing high-tech industries.     

塔吉克斯坦2004年的预算赤字为GDP的0.5%

2003年12月10日塔吉克斯坦议会下院批准了2004年度财政预算案。按照预算草案,塔吉克斯坦2004年度的预算支出为9.428亿索姆尼(约2.9亿美元),预算收入为9.173亿索姆尼,预算赤字2 550万索姆尼,占GDP的0.5％(2003年的     

Exports,imports and growth: New evidence on Italy: 1863–2004

The nexus between trade and economic growth in Italy has been widely debated by historiography. However, there are no long run analyses on this topic that cover the whole span from Unification to present days. This paper contributes to fill this gap by investigating the relationship between real exports, imports and GDP in Italy from 1863 to 2004 by using cointegration analysis and causality tests. The outcome suggests that these variables comove in the long run but the direction of causality varies across time. In the period prior to the First World War import growth led GDP growth that in turn led export growth. Conversely, in the post-Second World War period we have a strong bidirectionality between imports and exports consequent on the increase in intra-industry trade. We also find a weak support for export-led growth and growth-led imports. This suggests that exports were not the only or the main driver of economic growth. There was probably a multiplicity of factors at work, among which high rates of capital formation and the expansion of internal demand probably stood out.     

China's explicit social security debt: How large?

Local governments in China have used a large amount of funds from individual accounts to finance deficits in the pay-as-you-go social pooling account, resulting in explicit social security debt. It is undoubtedly useful to know how large the debt is and how it will evolve in the future. This paper assesses the debt in China's social security individual accounts. It shows detailed calculations of the revenue, the anticipated funds, expenditures, and the debt in the individual accounts since their inception in 1997. The social security debt for China reached 1.59% of the GDP in 2015. The paper also assesses the historical social security debt in the individual accounts for each province. It shows that social security debt is unevenly spread, reaching more than 10% in Heilongjiang province and being negative in Guangdong province in 2015. The determinants for high debt in the individual accounts are examined based on the data from thirty-one Chinese provinces from 1997 to 2015. The paper also forecasts social security debt in the future and finds that the social security debt will reach over 8% of GDP in 2025 if the current system remains unchanged. Various ways to reduce the social security debt are also explored.     

China's urban poor – Comparing twice poverty between residents and migrants in 2013 and 2018

Using data from the China Household Income Project in 2013 and 2018, this paper studies relative poverty among rural hukou holders living in urban China and urban hukou holders. People living in households with an income below a fixed percent of the median per-capita income and wealth below the same fixed percent of the median per-capita wealth among urban residents are deemed as relative poor. Although migrants with rural hukou living in urban China were more prone to twice poverty than urban residents in 2013, this was not generally the case in 2018.A multivariate analysis shows several factors to be related to the probability of being twice relative poor. Even considering these factors, a rural hukou status increased the probability of being twice relative poor in 2013. In contrast, such an excess risk of being twice relative poor was much lesser outspoken in middle and low-ranking cities in 2018. However, rural to urban migrants living in high-ranking cities had a somewhat higher risk of being relative poor than urban residents with the same characteristics in 2018.     

Motor Vehicle Output and GDP, 1968–2007

In this paper, we assess the performance of the BEA series “value of motor vehicle output” as an indicator of the business cycle over the period 1968–2007. We statistically assess the causal relationship between real motor vehicle output (RMVO) and real gross domestic product (RGDP). This is accomplished by standard estimation and statistical methods used to assess vector autoregressive models. This assessment represents the initial results of a more encompassing research project, the intent of which is to determine the dynamic interaction of the transport sector with the overall economy. It’s a start to a more comprehensive assessment of how transport and economic activity interrelate.

Inequality of land tenure and revolutionary outcome: An economic analysis of China's land reform of 1946–1952

A paradoxical feature of China's land reform of 1946–1952 is that it was conducted far more radically in the north, where land tenure relations were far less unequal, than in the south where inequality of land tenure was distinctly more acute. That landlords could only be identified in south China was attributable to the sharply more active land rental market there, and the “single-cut” policy of defining the landlords narrowly as a rentier class. We attribute the predominance of an active land rental market in south China to three socioeconomic characteristics: 1) a sharply higher inequality in land distribution, 2) an organization of agriculture whose efficiency required the “unsupervised initiatives” of family labor, and 3) a distinctly higher proportion of “absentee landlords”. Our hypothesis of land rentals being the only variable distinguishing the landlords from the rich peasants and only in south China is strongly supported by empirical evidence.