1.媒体来源:
Economics
经济学人
2.完整新闻标题:
Whether to believe China's GDP figures
是否该相信中国GDP数据
3.完整新闻内文:
IT ALL seems a little too perfect to be true. The Chinese government set a g
rowth target of “about 7%” this year. And for a second consecutive quarter
, despite ample evidence of stress in its industrial sector, it managed to h
it that right on its head. In the three months from April to June, the econo
my expanded 7% compared with the same period a year earlier. Cue the chorus
of scepticism: Chinese data just cannot be trusted, goes the usual refrain.
Yes and no. There is a difference between smoothing data and totally fabrica
ting it. Evidence suggests that China is guilty of the former (the lesser ch
arge) but not the latter (the more serious allegation).
这一切看起来有些太过完美以致显得不真实。中国政府今年制定了“7%”的增长目标。
连续两个季度，经过有充分证据表明工业部门承受着压力，政府仍成功达成了目标。在
四月到六月的三个月里，与上年同期相比经济增长了7%。这暗合了那些怀疑论：中国的
数据不可信。这既对也不对，平滑的数据与完全捏造的数据是有区别的。有证据表明是
中国属于前者，而不是后者。
China has a history of ironing out the ruffles in its growth figures. No les
s an authority than Li Keqiang, now the premier, once said that local GDP da
ta were "man-made and therefore unreliable". The most notorious case of mani
pulation came in 1998 in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. Many A
sian countries suffered recessions but China claimed to grow by a hefty 7.8%
that year. Looking at other indicators, many economists concluded that grow
th was in fact closer to 5%. The manipulations can occasionally work in the
opposite direction. In the early 2000s, when China reported growth of 8-9%,
some reckoned that it really expanded by closer to 10%. Why would China unde
rstate its growth? One possibility is that statisticians missed big parts of
the economy. Another is that the government downplayed its strength to avoi
d arousing anger at a time when its export juggernaut was beginning to rev u
p.
中国有减少经济增长数据波动的历史。没有比现任总理李克强曾说过地方GDP数据“有人
为痕迹，不可信”更能说明这点了。最臭名昭著的操纵事件发生在亚洲经融危机之后的
1998年。许多亚洲国家都遭受了经济衰退，但中国那年声称自己增长了7.8%。通过其他
指标看，许多经济学家认为增长实际上接近5%。中国有时也会向与此相反的方向伪造数
据。在本世纪初，当中国以8-9%增长时，有些人测算其增速接近10%。为什么中国要低估
其增长？一种可能性是统计人员忽视了经济中的很大一部分。另一种可能性是政府为了
掩藏自己的力量，以避免当时其开始加速成长的强大出口引起他国愤怒。
As China’s economy has become more crucial to rest of the world, its data h
ave also come under closer scrutiny. The theory was that this would make it
harder for its boffins to play with GDP numbers. In the first quarter, thoug
h, major doubts resurfaced. Industrial production fell to its weakest growth
since the depths of the global financial crisis, while the property market,
a pillar of the economy, slumped. When China reported real growth of 7% yea
r-on-year in the first quarter, economists noted that this did not stack up
with its nominal growth of 5.8%. The only way to arrive at the higher real f
igure was to record a GDP deflator of -1.1%, implying that the economy suffe
red broad-based deflation, a bizarre development when consumer prices rose b
y more than 1% at the same time. Had the GDP deflator been accurately estima
ted, Chang Liu and Mark Williams of Capital Economics reckoned, real growth
in the first quarter would have been about one or two percentage points lowe
r.
随着中国经济在世界中变得越来越重要，它的数据也受到更严格的审查。理论上这使得
玩弄GDP数据变得更加困难。在第一季度，主要疑点浮出水面。工业生产增长率下滑至经
融危机后的最低点，同时，作为经济支柱之一的房地产大幅下降。当中国报道其第一季
度同比实际增长率为7%时，经济学家指出其5.8%的名义增长并不能达成这个数据。唯一
达成这实际增长数据的方法是有-1.1%的GDP平减指数。这表明经济遭受了广泛的通货紧
缩。但离奇的是同是消费者价格在同期增长了超过1%。凯投宏观的Chang Liu 和 Mark
Williams 测算，第一季度的实际增长要低一到两个百分点。
China’s new data, published today, appear to be more credible. In nominal t
erms, growth rebounded strongly from 5.8% year-on-year in the first quarter
to 7.1% in the second quarter. The corollary is that the GDP deflator went f
rom deflation of 1.1% to inflation of 0.1%, a reading that is much more cons
istent with rising consumer prices and falling producer prices. Still, there
were signs of some tampering. Without providing any explanation, the nation
al bureau of statistics lowered the quarter-on-quarter growth rate of the se
cond quarter of 2014 to 1.9% from 2%. The effect was likely to lower the bas
e of comparison for the second quarter of 2015, flattering the year-on-year
growth rate. The impact, though, would have been relatively small: a few ten
ths of a percentage point, not a few percentage points.
中国的最新数据在今日公布，该数据看起来更为可信。在名义上，同比增长在第二季度
强劲反弹，从第一季度的5.8%增长到了7.1%。其必然结果是GDP平减指数从通缩1.1%变成
了通胀0.1%，这与增长的消费者价格和下降生产者价格更加一致。不过，仍然有一些篡
改的迹象。没做任何解释，国家统计局将2014年第二季度的环比增长率从2%降到了1.9%
。其效果是使2015年第二季度有了更低的比较基数，让同比增长率更加好看。这产生的
影响比较小：影响的是零点几个百分点，而不是几个百分点。
What’s more, the sources of Chinese growth in the second quarter were less
mysterious than in the first quarter. While investment continued to slow, se
rvices accelerated. The industrial sector grew 6.1% year-on-year in the firs
t half, down from 6.4% in the first quarter. By contrast, the services secto
r jumped to 8.4% growth from 7.9% in the first quarter. That matters since s
ervices now occupy a larger share of Chinese GDP than industry. There is rea
son to doubt the sustainability of the services strength. It was predicated
to a large extent on financial services benefiting from the stockmarket bubb
le that popped last month. But the gains for financial services, whether tra
nsient or not, were real. China’s statisticians did not invent them.
而且，二季度中国经济增长的来源与第一季度相比也不那么神秘。投资继续放缓，服务
业加速上升。上半年工业部门同比增长6.1%，比第一季度的6.4%低。相比之下，服务业
的增长率从第一季度的7.9%跃升至8.4%。现在服务业在中国GDP中所占比重大于工业，不
过有理由怀疑服务业增长的可持续性。它很大程度上得益于金融服务，而上个月股市泡
沫发生破灭。但不管是不是暂时的，金融服务业的增长是真实的，中国的统计人员没有
发明它们。
4.完整新闻连结 (或短网址):
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/07/chinese-economy
5.备注:
一两次的数据造假很容易，长期的数据造假几乎是不可能的事。