『Abstract
China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has on repeated occasions
explained in great detail how its GDP statistics are derived from
the underlying data. Based on these explanations, this article
reconstructs Chinese official household consumption, which accounts
for half of GDP. The findings are condemning. Not only do the
various official explanations offered between 1997 and 2001 differ
from each other, but none allows the researcher to accurately
reconstruct household consumption. Furthermore, the relationship
between the GDP component household consumption and the underlying
data varies from year to year, which suggests that time series
comparisons of Chinese GDP may be invalid.
Key words: Chinese statistics; National income accounting; System
of National Accounts (SNA); Household surveys; Population statistics』
1. Introduction
2. Data
3. NIA consumption components and underlying household survey
data
3.1. Rural own account consumption
3.2. Commodity consumption
3.3. Cultural and personal service consumption
3.4. Housing, water, and electricity consumption
3.5. Additional NIA consumption items
4. Implications of aggregate data
5. Problems with underlying population data
6. Conclusions
References