Hello back! Louise here. On Friday, President Trump dismissed one of the best economists in the country after her agency published a disappointing work report. Trump claimed that the numbers were “falsified”, but there is no evidence that Erika MCENTARFER or the Labor Statistics Office (BLS) did something wrong. However, modern employment data suggested that Trump’s policy has a negative impact on the US economy.
On the days since then, the Republicans made up, unreasonably accusing Mcentarfer of issuing “false reports”. Trump has not yet mentioned the modern BLS Commissioner, but the Saga has already made some Americans question whether it is possible to trust government statistics. If you want to take a look at where he leads, just look at China.
The Chinese government has long been accused of overstated the annual GDP growth, especially at the province level. In 2007, the former Chinese prime minister told the US ambassador in China that the numbers of GDP of his province were “it”Managed by man. “To understand how his region is doing, Li Keqiang said that instead he followed the consumption of electricity, freight volumes and bank loans, a system that the economist later called” Li Keqiang index “.
Over 15 years later, experts say that everything has changed significantly. The Chinese government now releases more economic data and is generally considered more reliable. “The data has improved significantly over time,” says Nicholas R. Lardy, an older employee of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who has been writing about the Chinese economy since the 1970s.
One of the reasons is that Beijing has stopped assessing local officials primarily based on the economic results of their regions. This way of thinking about values in costs led to social problems such as common pollution. In response, the Chinese communist party began more emphasis on refined ideals, such as supporting innovation and reducing the division of urban rural. This, in turn, reduced the motivation to manipulate GDP numbers.
But many analysts, both in China and outside, believe that Beijing still runs their overall growth, partly because officials remain deeply interested in the projection of the pink image of the economy. China officially announced that his economy was growing by 5 percent In 2024, while the US recorded only 2.8 percent of the growth.
At a conference in December, an economist from a Chinese state investment company said that “we do not know” a real number of China, but speculated that it is much below what was reported. When XI Jinping got comments, it was apparently furious And he ordered the punishment of an economist. Sounds familiar?
When China’s economy has cooled down in recent years, officials have repeatedly tried to distinguish experts who share negative information or dare to question Beijing. Government departments have ceased to publish some industrial reports and employment indicators or temporarily delayed their release without explanation. Other data has become more complex to interpret or may no longer Access to the country.
But like many things in China, two seemingly contradictory things can be real at the same time. While the experts I talked to decided that China is much less crystal clear than the US, they claim that the information he presents is now relatively true and often amazingly detailed.