- European Pressphoto Agency
As if the reputation of China’s economic data wasn’t shaky enough already, an odd bureaucratic tug of war is casting new doubt on one of the country’s more closely watched indicators.
China’s official Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), a gauge of the nation’s manufacturing activity, has been jointly released by the National Bureau of Statistics and an industry association called the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing (CFLP) since 2005. Now, however, each body is trying to claim the data for itself.
The dispute originated with a statement posted on the Bureau of Statistics website on January 6 (in Chinese) saying it was the bureau that conducted the manager surveys that underpin the index conducted by the bureau. According to the statement, the CFLP merely published the survey under the authorization of the bureau.
The statement also quoted Pan Jiancheng, deputy director of the bureau’s China Economic Monitoring & Analysis Center, as saying the bureau planned to integrate all economic climate surveys and publish them as a group because “whoever conducts the survey should be the one to publish it.”
Three days later, the federation said in a statement on its own website (in Chinese) that PMI would not be part of the official climate surveys to be published by the statistics bureau.
“Somebody from the Bureau of Statistics is unhappy that we are doing such a good job with the PMI and decided to get tricky,” Cai Jin, deputy director of the CFLP, told the Shanghai-based Oriental Morning Post this week (in Chinese). “This has very negative influence on China’s PMI data.”
CFLP said in its statement that it submitted a request to establish the index in 2004 and that the NBS said it supported the proposal but asked the federation can make use of bureau’s existing enterprise survey resources to avoid redundancy. “Our federation is responsible for the release, analysis and interpretation of the survey,” CFLP said in its statement, adding that it is common practice for independent organizations to publish PMI to ensure objectivity.
According to its website, the CLFP, which claims to have thousands of purchasing manager members, is the only purchasing industry association approved by the State Council, China’s cabinet.
In the days since the Bureau of Statistics published its statement, Mr. Cai said, financial institutions and news media have pelting the CLFP with questions, expressing concern that the bureau might manipulate PMI based on other macroeconomic data.
“That’s why we have to clear things out,” Oriental Morning Post quoted Mr. Cai as saying.
China’s Purchasing Managers Index rose to 50.3 in December compared with 49.0 in November, indicating an increase in manufacturing activity. The rise came after HSBC Holdings PLC’s survey of purchasing managers showed manufacturing activity contracting in December, though at a more moderate pace than in the previous month.
The HSBC PMI has showed contractions in manufacturing in all but one of the past six months, painting a significantly less optimistic picture than the Chinese government’s competing PMI. Analysts say the HSBC PMI has been weaker because it surveys more purchasing managers from smaller firms, which have had difficulty accessing loans from banks.
– Liyan Qi
Reforms started in the late 1970s with the phasing out of collectivized agriculture, and expanded to include the gradual liberalization of prices, fiscal decentralization, increased autonomy for state enterprises, the foundation of a diversified banking system, the development of stock markets, the rapid growth of the non-state sector, and the opening to foreign trade and investment.
In 2009, the global economic downturn reduced foreign demand for Chinese exports for the first time in many years.
China is the world’s fastest-growing major economy, with an average growth rate of 10% for the past 30 years.
Available energy is insufficient to run at fully installed industrial capacity, and the transport system is inadequate to move sufficient quantities of such critical items as coal.
Agricultural output has been vulnerable to the effects of weather, while industry has been more directly influenced by the government.
China has acquired some highly sophisticated production facilities through trade and also has built a number of advanced engineering plants capable of manufacturing an increasing range of sophisticated equipment, including nuclear weapons and satellites, but most of its industrial output still comes from relatively ill-equipped factories.
China’s ongoing economic transformation has had a profound impact not only on China but on the world.
Both forums will start on Tuesday.
But “this is just a beginning.
It also aims to sell more than 15 million of the most fuel-efficient vehicles in the world each year by then.
Although China is still a developing country with a relatively low per capita income, it has experienced tremendous economic growth since the late 1970s.
Agriculture is by far the leading occupation, involving over 50% of the population, although extensive rough, high terrain and large arid areas – especially in the west and north – limit cultivation to only about 10% of the land surface.
Except for the oasis farming in Xinjiang and Qinghai, some irrigated areas in Inner Mongolia and Gansu, and sheltered valleys in Tibet, agricultural production is restricted to the east.
China ranks first in world production of red meat (including beef, veal, mutton, lamb, and pork).
Oil fields discovered in the 1960s and after made China a net exporter, and by the early 1990s, China was the world’s fifth-ranked oil producer.
China is among the world’s four top producers of antimony, magnesium, tin, tungsten, and zinc, and ranks second (after the United States) in the production of salt, sixth in gold, and eighth in lead ore.
China also has extensive hydroelectric energy potential, notably in Yunnan, W Sichuan, and E Tibet, although hydroelectric power accounts for only 5% of the country’s total energy production.
There are railroads to North Korea, Russia, Mongolia, and Vietnam, and road connections to Pakistan, India, Nepal, and Myanmar.
Excerpt from:
China’s Stats Bureau in Odd Ownership Spat Over Important Index
