Research

RIWI China High Frequency Macro Datafeed

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.