Official statistics still show the growth rate similar to the plan – in 2024 exactly 5 percent. GDP. Independent estimates, however, are much lower. Rhodium Group calculates that the real pace was at most 2.4-2.8 percent, and Bofit (Bank Finland Institute) suggests that the deviation from the numbers of the National Statistical Office (NBS) exceeds one percentage point and the trend of slowdown will extend to the coming years.
The sensitivity of the Chinese economy apparently focuses in real estate. The sale of new houses has shrunk by almost half since 2020, and prices are still falling despite subsequent rescue packages. State developers, such as Vanke, report record losses, which shows that Problems are no longer limited to private Evergrande giants.
Foreign capital of foreign capital has also reversed. The net flow of direct investments fell in 2024 to a record deficit of $ 168 billion.
The Chinese economy will be hidden
The fact that the economy goes out can also be seen in the labor market. In June 2023, the young unemployment rate in cities reached 21.3 percent, after which NBS … stopped giving it. The data returned only in December, but after changing the methodology, 62 million students were excluded from the calculation. As a result, the official rate fell to 14.9 percent, although in March 2025 it again jumped to 16.5 percent.
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Hiding the deterioration of the economic situation is systematic. Earth sales statistics fell by 48 percent in 2022, and then the series was turned off at the beginning of 2023. From that moment Analysts follow individual transactions in local governments.
In May 2021, reports on the production of soy sauce disappeared, and in December 2022 – nationwide data on the number of cremations that could show a real scale of death after moving away from Zero -Covid policy. Weekly tuberculosis vaccines are also unavailable – so far one of the better birth rates.
It also gets mysterious in the financial sphere. In April 2024, the stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen deleted in real time a stream of information about the influx and outflows of foreign capital, leaving only daily summaries to investors. Data on the debt of paid road operators or the number of new brokerage accounts also disappeared from the NBS newsletters.
Even a private database supplier, Wind Information, has limited the remote access of foreign users to e -commerce statistics or land auction from 2023.
China does not want to share the data
Why does Beijing turn off subsequent indicators? Conflicting goals are overlapped here like varnish layers. The communist party wants to maintain a picture of stabilityespecially when real estate – once a 30 % motorbike GDP – have become a source of protests, and the outflow of foreign investors accelerates.
At the same time, the Chinese Act on Data Safety from 2021. gives the regulators a wide right to classify information as sensitive and blocking their “export”. This makes it easier to darken the image without giving reasons.
Hiding numbers, however, does not mean that worries disappear. Rather, he shifts the risk to the rest of the world. Central banks modeling raw material inflation must guess how much Chinese industry really consumes. Experts of consumer goods – from German machine manufacturers after Brazilian soybeans – do not know whether the decline in Chinese demand is cyclical or structural. Investors of the portfolio lose the ability to track “Northbound” flows on the stock exchanges, which deepens the variability and can lead to rapid correction of assets prices.
Economists react with improvisation. They combine the brightness of night satellite lights with Baidu travel records and the production of cement and electricity in the largest power plants to estimate real growth. Goldman Sachs has built, for example, a model that uses only commercial data, because it can be crossed with Beijing partners. However, even the best replacement indicators are fraught with more than official series, which increases the scale of uncertainty in forecasts for the entire world economy.
The consequences of Beijing's silence are materialized. China's participation in the US imports dropped to 13.4 percent, at the same time The number of duties and restrictions aimed at Chinese goods is growing. Trade partners who until recently made investment cycles dependent on Chinese demand are starting to look for new height centers. In the long horizon, the gap of data threatens not only incorrect allocation of capital, but also the fragmentation of global value chains and subsequent geopolitical tensions.
Without reliable statistics, it remains to observe the shadows on the wall – From satellite lamps to housing price lists. But the weaker the light, the greater the risk that politicians and investors will stumble. And it's not just about China, but about the whole economy, which is still intertwined with them.
