Funny Numbers from China?
Posted by Steven Hayward
Lester Thurow, not always the most reliable prognosticator in the past, has a compelling article in yesterday’s New York Times that China’s economic growth numbers are exaggerated or perhaps even phony. Worth a look. I know from trolling for Chinese data that it can be very inconsistent and contradictory.
9:56 AM / August 20, 2007
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A nice little tutorial on how projections based on selective statistics can send you quite astray...I like his little thought-experiment at the end, wherein current statistics on population growth allow one, with a bit of tweaking, to conclude that the U.S. population will exceed China's by the end of the century.
Also worth noting the US advantage and growth of purchasing power from 1990 to present as compared to other nations.
Maybe Thurow's learned from his past mistakes...in the early 90s he made a pretty compelling case that Japan and esp. Germany were going to zoom past us, particularly due to their "investments" in worker-education, job-retraining. Clinton/Reich Dems like yours truly in those days ate it up, but it obviously proved to be dead wrong.
It's not just the Chinese numbers that are funny. You should see their weird letters!