China is becoming increasingly opaque about its economic performance, quietly discontinuing thousands of statistical series since President Xi assumed power back in 2012, as John Burns-Murdoch writes in the Financial Times. This is part of a trend towards statistical opacity as China shifts from sustained high growth to more modest numbers. During the 2022 Party Congress which reinstalled Xi for a third term, China unexpectedly delayed the release of its GDP figures, only to release them after the Congress.
Even once released, the data are backward-looking, and don’t allow analysts a real-time or forward-looking view of the true rate of Chinese economic growth.
As a result, analysts are turning to everything from satellite imagery and transactions data to get a true read on the economy. As part of that trend, for the past few years, RIWI has been quietly gathering continuous datafeeds on a range of indicators such as housing prices, affordability, consumer confidence, views on COVID-19 and other indicators.
For a sample analysis from this dataset, see Why is Chinese consumer spending weakening?
To access the dataset, please contact us at ask@riwi.com.
