Two revealing stories

This caught my eye:

China has delayed at the last minute the release of eagerly anticipated third quarter economic data, including its closely watched gross domestic product growth rate, which were due to be issued in the middle of the 20th communist party conference.

No explanation for the postponement was given in an update to an official statistics calendar and no new dates were provided. . . .

The latest figures were originally set to be published on Tuesday at a politically sensitive time, with China’s president Xi Jinping expected to use the party congress to extend his powers for a third term and outline the country’s overarching policy approach.

The economic data were expected to highlight China’s continued economic weaknesses, including a worsening property crisis and the impact of strict zero-Covid policies that this year locked down dozens of big cities, stifled consumption and effectively closed the country off from the rest of the world.

Cover-up?

Here’s another story:

Research at Boston University that involved testing a lab-made hybrid version of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is garnering heated headlines alleging the scientists involved could have unleashed a new pathogen.

There is no evidence the work, performed under biosecurity level 3 precautions in BU’s National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories, was conducted improperly or unsafely. In fact, it was approved by an internal biosafety review committee and Boston’s Public Health Commission, the university said Monday night.

But it has become apparent that the research team did not clear the work with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which was one of the funders of the project. The agency indicated it is going to be looking for some answers as to why it first learned of the work through media reports.

I find the media response to both stories to be quite revealing. For years, the media has been telling us that China fakes its GDP figures to make the government look good. In that case, why weren’t these figures also faked? Why withhold the data? It makes no sense to me . . . unless . . . perhaps China’s National Statistics Bureau doesn’t fake the data. That would explain why the data was withheld at a sensitive time.

The BU gain of function story is also confusing. For several years, we’ve been bombarded with stories that the Chinese were doing risky gain-of-function research on the Covid virus. After all of this negative publicity, we find that the US is doing the same sort of research? And yet it doesn’t seem to be a major story. Why?

Am I drawing a moral equivalence between the US and China? No, we don’t have the sort of wild animal markets that the Chinese have. And these animal markets have produced two epidemics since 2002. That is how we differ from China.


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39 Responses to “Two revealing stories”

  1. Gravatar of TGGP TGGP
    23. October 2022 at 12:04

    It’s debatable what counts as a “big” story, but the NYT has covered the BU scientists coming under fire for just this:
    https://twitter.com/R_H_Ebright/status/1583864729784590336

    A recent paper found that China & Myanmar has the largest discrepancies between their reported statistics and what satellite data would suggest of their economic growth, part of a general pattern of democratic vs autocratic governments:
    https://academic.oup.com/isq/article/59/2/223/1788378?login=false

  2. Gravatar of Xi Xi
    23. October 2022 at 14:04

    Sounds like you are unaware of the close collaborations of US and China in gain of function research. Dr Fauci funded Wuhan lab’s gain of function researches. When the Covid-19 broke out, Dr Fauci made US researchers change their article’s conclusion; in exchange the researchers received million dollar funding.

  3. Gravatar of Jonathan Vause Jonathan Vause
    23. October 2022 at 19:37

    when the local-level data (honest-ish) were totalled the national-level result was deemed unsatisfactory, so it had to be revised upwards before release. if you don’t think the data are at least massaged/smoothed then you’re at odds with pretty much every serious China analyst I follow

  4. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    23. October 2022 at 19:48

    Everyone, I’ve been to China many times, and traveled all over the country (urban and rural). It looks about as rich as the official figures show. That may be wrong, but it looks like a normal middle income country—say like Mexico. And that’s also what the official figures show.

    Xi, I’m not a fan of unproven conspiracy theories.

    Jonathan, Most of the articles that I’ve read suggest that the official national GDP figures are LOWER than the sum of the reported local GDP figures. Local figures are biased by the incentive system in China, where officials are promoted based on local GDP growth. Not sure where you got your information.

    The smoothing comes from the different way that China reports its GDP figures. If the US used the same technique, our figures would also look much smoother.

  5. Gravatar of Sara Sara
    23. October 2022 at 19:55

    Local chinese officials have already admitted to revising numbers upwards as a way to curry favor with the thugs in their party — the same thugs that removed the prior premier on live telivision, and who is now missing. Indeed, a few of these local officials have been removed from their posts for fudging numbers.

    When the gangsters are in charge, you don’t want to dissappoint them.
    You always meet their expectations, if not exceed it, otherwise you might be forcibly removed.

    And there is a big difference between Boston University (just second rate psuedointellectuals doing stupid things) and a federally funded lab, setup abroad and off the grid, designed to avoid domestic regulations.

  6. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    23. October 2022 at 20:07

    Sara, I said:

    Local figures are biased by the incentive system in China, where officials are promoted based on local GDP growth.

    You said:

    Local chinese officials have already admitted to revising numbers upwards as a way to curry favor with the thugs in their party

    Wouldn’t it have saved you some keystrokes to just say you agree with my previous comment?

    “designed to avoid domestic regulations.”

    There are no local regs against gain of function research.

  7. Gravatar of Jonathan Vause Jonathan Vause
    23. October 2022 at 20:28

    the idea that national data is *usually* revised down doesn’t contradict the idea that this time, bcz it’s special, it was revised upwards compared to what it would normally have been using the usual adjustment method. of course the local data tend to be biased upwards, and obviously the last data set could well have been surprisingly weak despite this bias. it strains credulity to claim that the decision to delay the release wasn’t politically motivated, and there aren’t many credible political motivations available.

  8. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    23. October 2022 at 20:40

    Jonathan, You said:

    “it strains credulity to claim that the decision to delay the release wasn’t politically motivated,”

    Of course it’s politically motivated, that’s exactly my point. Read the post again.

    So in your first comment you imply that no “serious” scholar holds my beliefs. Now you admit I was right about local government bias upward in GDP data. So say so! I need the praise. 🙂

  9. Gravatar of Jonathan Vause Jonathan Vause
    24. October 2022 at 02:59

    no Scott I think you’re having a bad day here. I think they did fake the data, this time, it was going to be released as usual when a senior official saw it and said, no you can’t release that, and it was subsequently massaged upwards, ie faked. not surprisingly it was better than expectations, which makes it hard to understand why, if ‘CNSB doesn’t fake the data’ it would have been delayed for political reasons

    if we’re going to get into ‘implications’ then you clearly seemed to imply that the data aren’t faked at all (does anyone really claim that there is no connection to reality? I’ve never read any serious analyst claim that). but once we get to ‘some connection to reality but in the end the number is what the government decides is acceptable’ then your statement ‘CNSB doesn’t fake the data’ is just wrong

  10. Gravatar of Ricardo Ricardo
    24. October 2022 at 03:09

    China never lies. And don’t ever forget it.
    Their tech companies are not owned by the CCP.
    Their tech companies never put malware in their code.
    Their government officials always produce the correct numbers, because they have such incredible integrity.
    They have a completely open market and therefore so should we.
    The uigher camps are not labor camps.
    Nobody is forcibly held against their will for religious purposes, or because they are not “Han”, or because they called Xi winnie the pooh.
    Nobody ever disappears.
    Covid came from a mysterious U.S. lab, and not from their lab.

    Only the west is to blame. Only the west is wrong.

    Are you starting to see the Sumner pattern here?

    China good. America bad.
    Vote for China. Become China. Modify your “behavior” to be chinese. Subjugation is freedom. Enslavement is emancipation.
    We just need to get rid of those pesky individualists, and then we’ll all live in that utopian China where nobody ever lies

  11. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    24. October 2022 at 08:18

    Jonathan, You are missing the point. AFAIK, this was the only data release that was delayed. Let’s say it was massaged a bit (which seems plausible). If delay is evidence of data manipulation, then why weren’t the other reports delayed? If the Chinese government always gives the government what they want, why was this one delayed? Why wasn’t it massaged and released on time like the other reports?

    I view the fact of delay this time as evidence that the statistics bureau’s figures are usually relatively honest, and that’s why these figures had to be delayed (and maybe massaged).

    Now I’d be the first to admit that Xi is leading China in a very dark direction. It’s very possible that all future GDP data will be completely fake. But the data until now seem quite plausible to me, both in terms of levels of GDP/person and growth rates.

  12. Gravatar of David S David S
    24. October 2022 at 11:30

    Econbrowser has an update on China GDP. I don’t think China is faking much, and I certainly agree that Xi is backing his country into a dark corner. Hopefully, he’s paying careful attention to the Russia-Ukraine war because it’s demonstrating the limits to autocratic nationalism. If Xi, or his successor, were to invade Taiwan they would be more vulnerable than Putin in many respects.

    I can’t help but wonder if the Covid lockdowns are a testing ground for an even more restrictive regime that would be geared towards wartime mobilization. Get everyone trained for economic deprivation while battles rage in the South China Sea.

  13. Gravatar of Jon Jon
    24. October 2022 at 20:10

    Scott,

    What’s your theory to explain the decline in detail?

    https://twitter.com/heimbergecon/status/1583703287542403072

  14. Gravatar of Steve Steve
    25. October 2022 at 03:51

    Xi, I’m not a fan of unproven conspiracy theories.

    Sumner is going to die on the truth is conspiracy hill.

    There’s a reason Fauci and Zuckerberg organized a mass censorship campaign in the early days of Covid. It was to get people like Sumner committed to a false version of history.

  15. Gravatar of George George
    25. October 2022 at 06:01

    https://townhall.com/columnists/johnnantz/2022/10/25/how-do-you-successfully-lie-to-300-million-people-n2614946

    All, if you need to understand how lies can be pushed as truth, look no further than the lying dishonest enemy of the people msm, which the site owner uses as the only ‘source of truth’ to establish whether a statement is ‘truth’ or ‘conspiracy theory’.

    If the MSM doesn’t acknowledge it, it’s not truth it’s conspiracy theory.

    Site owner has many posts ‘calling out Trump’s lies’ (because MSM said so, before many of which turned out to be true all along revealing MSM to have lied), but when Joe Biden is proved to have lied, the site owner is nowhere near as vocal or upset. Why?

  16. Gravatar of George George
    25. October 2022 at 06:11

    The site owner is still pushing the unproven ‘wet market’ conspiracy theory, and in the comments declares “I’m not a fan of unproven conspiracy theories”.

    LOL, if the left didn’t have double standards they wouldn’t have any standards at all.

    Steve:
    “There’s a reason Fauci and Zuckerberg organized a mass censorship campaign in the early days of Covid. It was to get people like Sumner committed to a false version of history.”

    BINGO. That is exactly right.

    This also happens with election outcomes, and war.

    What better way for radical left perpetrators of evil to implement their plans than to brainwash the gullible leftists in the public to become voluntary ‘fighters’ on their behalf?

    ‘iF I DiDn’t sEe iT oN MsDnC oR CnN, tHeN iT’s aN UnPrOvEn cOnSpiRaCy ThEoRy’

    Happy to see more posters are awake!

  17. Gravatar of George George
    25. October 2022 at 06:49

    “The BU gain of function story is also confusing. For several years, we’ve been bombarded with stories that the Chinese were doing risky gain-of-function research on the Covid virus. After all of this negative publicity, we find that the US is doing the same sort of research? And yet it doesn’t seem to be a major story. Why?”

    It’s obvious. If the legacy media sounded the alarm about this, they would contradict their own narrative on the efficacy of the vaccines that have been developed SINCE the Wuhan virus bioweapon was unleashed on the world.

    Why would we expect the media, who are all primarily focused on the midterms, be AS concerned about another covid variant after the ‘vaccines’ have already been created, when they have spent years touting the ‘vaccines’ as the (only) solution?

    I sounded the alarm as soon as I saw the news about Boston University, and posted it here, so nobody can accuse me of being a hypocrite. I think it’s huge news.

    I agree there is rank hypocrisy in the media though. But it’s not because China bad and US good, that’s actually an inverted projection of the sire owner’s own propensity to push narrative China good US less good.

    The legacy media is in the tank for China, that’s why they ‘Muh Russia’ 24/7 while turning a blind eye to China.

    But they may change their tune after yesterday’s signal from the DOJ that China is no longer behaving appropriately (as if that’s ‘new’, lol)

    But all that being said, the site owner is in no position to point out any hypocrisy in the legacy media used as source of truth, because the site owner trusts the mRNA genetic altering shots that have been created SINCE the Wuhan created sars-cov-2 virus bioweapon was unleashed, so another variant manufactured today is not exactly like a variant manufactured three years ago before the shots were created.

  18. Gravatar of Jim Glass Jim Glass
    25. October 2022 at 06:54

    “Chinese Stocks Crash In Massive Selloff”

    Markets reacts to news!…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F84S0xzSlWE

    perhaps China’s National Statistics Bureau doesn’t fake the data

    China’s outgoing premier, Li Keqiang, was quoted in Wikileaks as saying some years back that China’s GDP figures were “for reference only” and regional GDP data were “man made”.

    “Is China Telling the Truth about their GDP Figures?”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9v3C1mvV_eE&t=43s

    Incentives (and checks and balances) matter. What incentive would the top people in an authoritarian (much less Leninist) state, whose legitimacy rests on the economic growth it produces, have to “massage” GDP growth numbers? (Surely the checks and balances imposed on them would stop them.)

    Moreover, what possible incentive could the regional and local governments that bear the brunt of producing GDP growth for the top people have to “massage” the data and information that gets passed upward? Especially as “officials are promoted based on local GDP growth”.

    If that could happen on a large scale in an authoritarian state, just imagine the problems Putin would be having on all fronts.

    But I guess technically one might say all that well known massaging at every level is not exactly “faking” data. After all, “what is truth?”

  19. Gravatar of TallDave TallDave
    25. October 2022 at 07:40

    the Hang Seng Index is now trading below 1997 levels

    pretty amazing when you consider the S&P 500 is still up something like 400% since then

  20. Gravatar of TallDave TallDave
    25. October 2022 at 07:52

    and even more amazing when you compare the claimed GDP growth rates since 1997

    fairly easily explained by CCP’s strange desire to invest Chinese savings into rapidly depreciating building stock (e.g. still pouring more concrete than the rest of the world combined), but still certainly a misallocation sufficiently titanic to be studied for many decades to come

  21. Gravatar of TallDave TallDave
    25. October 2022 at 07:58

    and it’s not like US/China P/E ratios are radically different

    https://siblisresearch.com/data/pe-ratios-by-country/

    and as best I can tell, they weren’t all that different in 1997 either

    how do you grow GDP 500% without growing profits at all? quite the mystery 🙂

  22. Gravatar of George George
    25. October 2022 at 09:07

    https://justthenews.com/accountability/media/abc-nbc-and-cbs-criticized-gop-governors-13-times-more-biden-over-border

    And this is precisely why msm trusting viewers have associated the southern border problems with what the GOP is saying and doing, or not saying and doing.

  23. Gravatar of Michael Sandifer Michael Sandifer
    25. October 2022 at 21:09

    It’s difficult to lie about economic statistics, which is why many dishonest governments, like that in Venezuela, simply stop publishing some data.

  24. Gravatar of George George
    26. October 2022 at 05:13

    https://summit.news/2022/10/26/two-major-new-polls-show-americans-believe-the-media-is-a-threat-to-freedom/

    84% believe the media is a threat to democracy, 59% believe the media is a MAJOR threat to democracy.

    From day one Jan 2017 and almost every day thereafter, Trump has been calling out ‘the fake news’. Those still asleep reacted by concluding that the media must have something on Trump, when the truth all along was that they were projecting their own corruption onto the person exposing THEIR corruption.

    We’re just getting started. Most of you will have heard this the first time from me posting on this blog (you’re welcome): Wait until it’s ‘mainstream knowledge’ that the radical left legacy media is in fact a BRANCH OF THE ‘INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY’.

    Operation Mockingbird ended in name only.

    Screencap this.

  25. Gravatar of George George
    26. October 2022 at 05:56

    https://truthsocial.com/@KanekoaTheGreat/posts/109225317235292286

    Australian Parliament Member Fiona Simpson says it’s “extremely alarming” that U.S. election software CEO Eugene Yu has been arrested.

    “Eugene Yu tried to sue me for raising issues about Konnech…”

    “I believe these legal maneuvers by Mr. Yu are attempts to bully and gag an elected representative, and I’ll continue to demand greater transparency and accountability as well as security of our election system.”

    Lawfare / Information Warfare IS GLOBAL AND COORDINATED.

    Patterns are unmistakable.

  26. Gravatar of George George
    26. October 2022 at 06:13

    The devil went to Georgia.

    https://truthsocial.com/@realLizUSA/posts/109230973643450501

  27. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    26. October 2022 at 09:24

    Jon, I have no theory.

    TallDave, I don’t know what’s funnier, your equating of the Hong Kong and China economy, or your assumption that stock market measures GDP. I’d love to have your estimate of Japan’s GDP since 1980!

  28. Gravatar of Jim Glass Jim Glass
    27. October 2022 at 06:58

    “China’s Economy is 60% Smaller Than We Thought” — University of Chicago analysis…

    https://youtu.be/A5A5Eu0ra3I

    Yup, there are incentives throughout the system from the bottom up to “massage” the numbers, so massage them a little bit every year for a generation, consider the effect of compounding

    Though China’s rocketing debt isn’t any smaller than we thought.

  29. Gravatar of Ray Lopez Ray Lopez
    27. October 2022 at 13:14

    @Jim Glass – I came here to post the same thing. Great minds think alike. What will Sumner do with such an inconvenient truth? Ignore it or dismiss it without evidence? Stay tuned I guess…

    OT – Instead of debating something metaphysical, why not debate something real? Uni. of Chicago economist below. -RL

    China’s Economy is 60% Smaller Than We Thought
    https://www.moneymacro.rocks/2022-10-27-china-smaller/

    The Chinese Economy is Sixty Percent Smaller Than We Thought
    Posted on October 27, 2022

  30. Gravatar of George George
    27. October 2022 at 14:53

    https://www.help.senate.gov/ranking/newsroom/press/senate-help-committee-minority-oversight-staff-releases-interim-report-analyzing-origins-of-covid-19-pandemic

    Kaboom

    Senate report details ‘substantial evidence’ COVID-19 came from Wuhan lab.

    Will site owner still cling to the ‘wet market’ conspiracy theory?

  31. Gravatar of George George
    28. October 2022 at 08:22

    Jim Glass / Ray Lopez:

    Good digs.

    Fun fact: The logic of the cult of Richard Rorty would compel us to conclude that the inflated GDP numbers (‘man-made’ according to China’s VP) are nevertheless TRUE numbers, because the Chinese authorities are ‘getting away with’ publishing them.

    And, what the logic also compels us to conclude, is that whatever the cultists say in response to the above, THOSE statements themselves must be attempts to ‘get away with’ something to make those statements become believed as ‘true’.

    Is it a coincidence that the logic of Authoritarian Regimes like the CCP (who are AGAIN locking down whole cities and imprisoning people in their homes because of muh covid) is consistent with the logic of Rorty’s cult followers?

    Nope!

  32. Gravatar of Ray Lopez Ray Lopez
    28. October 2022 at 20:00

    Hey George, thanks. I know nothing about Rorty except what I just read on Wikipedia but he’s right about one thing: some people (Sumner) live in their own little world. External facts mean nothing to them. I don’t expect Sumner to give up ever on the idea that money is non-neutral short term, but it’s amazing how Sumner, like Putin, “doubles down” on bogus beliefs. Sumner ignoring the peer reviewed Martinez paper, which he he should have been aware of as it was probably circulating for months before it appeared in public (does Sumner read the preprint literature?), and Sumner not acknowledging he’s probably or even possibly wrong about the Wuhan virus, despite the evidence. At best about C19 virus Sumner has given the chance of a man-made virus being something like 10% probable a while ago, if I read correctly. I was of the opinion, when it was labeled a conspiracy theory in 2020 and I was one of the few to challenge this finding (and I was banned on several websites, despite providing evidence including the lack of an intermediate host), of it being man made at 20% or so probable, but now I’m of the opinion, given no “intermediate host” being found, unlike every other virus that infects man, of it being 80% probable as man-made.

    And I wrote in the mid-1990s on Usenet that China’s GDP is 33% over-stated, based on an energy analysis (Communist countries like Romania waste about 33% more energy than capitalist countries, a early 1990s paper found, so their GDP is about 33% overstated, and I used this to extrapolate for China, which is about what the recent paper found on average for authoritarian countries, about a 37% or so overstatement of GDP growth based on satellite night light data and corrected for city/country demographics, and in particular for China up to 60%, which surprised even me).

  33. Gravatar of George George
    29. October 2022 at 05:19

    Ray:

    “and I was banned on several websites, despite providing evidence including the lack of an intermediate host”

    Consider that a badge of honor. You were over the target.

    Lawsuits now in motion on the very censorship you’re referring to.

    It was all a scam to create a false history.

    https://ago.mo.gov/home/news/2022/10/21/court-orders-depositions-of-top-biden-officials-in-missouri-ag-s-case

  34. Gravatar of George George
    29. October 2022 at 05:40

    This is how ‘consensus’ is determined by the radical left.

    https://i.imgur.com/HIbms0l.jpg

    Then they paint views outside the shaped/formed ‘mainstream’ as ‘conspiracy theories’.

    See how that works?

    https://www.informedchoiceaustralia.com/post/1000-peer-reviewed-studies-questioning-covid-19-vaccine-safety

  35. Gravatar of ssumner ssumner
    29. October 2022 at 10:15

    “China’s Economy is 60% Smaller Than We Thought” — University of Chicago analysis…”

    So China’s about as poor as India? Thanks for clearing that up, Jim and Ray. I sure was fooled during my repeated visits, which took me all over China.

    Ray, I’m surprised you didn’t latch on that silly Vanity Fair report on Covid.

  36. Gravatar of Ray Lopez Ray Lopez
    29. October 2022 at 21:15

    @SS – “So China’s about as poor as India?” (re China GDP overstated by 60%). You need to lern how to use a calculator. Multiply China’s GDP of $17T by 0.6 or even 0.4 and you’ll not get India’s $3.2T. “Ray, I’m surprised you didn’t latch on that silly Vanity Fair report on Covid.” – Professor you do realize the Vanity Fair article is reporting on the very same Senate minority report cited by George, right?

    I’ll give you credit for not banning me over the years, as you probably had right to at times, as I tried to get your goat, unlike some other sites of a supposed “libertarian” streak, including but not limited to Mercatus, Selgin’s CATO site, and that wacky Alabama Mieses site. The Mercatus moderator, probably somebody one third my age, also once banned you I think, lol. I do read you from time to time but am too busy with real life to comment much these days. Bye.

  37. Gravatar of George George
    30. October 2022 at 06:22

    Ray:

    “You need to learn how to use a calculator. Multiply China’s GDP of $17T by 0.6 or even 0.4 and you’ll not get India’s $3.2T.”

    Doing the math, a 60% reduction would put China at just under the combined GDPs of Japan 4.9T and the UK 3.2T. In other words, using the ‘sCiEnTiFic’ method of walking through the countries, those are similar.

    “Ray, I’m surprised you didn’t latch on that silly Vanity Fair report on Covid.” – Professor you do realize the Vanity Fair article is reporting on the very same Senate minority report cited by George, right?”

    But it was labelled as ‘silly’, Ray. SILLY!

    Don’t you know that is a substantive argument that refutes everything you have researched?

  38. Gravatar of TallDave TallDave
    31. October 2022 at 07:57

    Scott, the Hang Seng is an index of Chinese stocks traded in HK… you can compare SHCOMP if you like, the results are no better

    and as you well know Japan had zero real growth for several decades

    but how did CCP get you to believe 500% GDP growth with zero investor returns to the largest indexes? you live in a country that returned 400% on not even a fifth of that growth

    ROTFLMAO

  39. Gravatar of TallDave TallDave
    31. October 2022 at 08:03

    japan is actually a great example… zero returns from 1991 to 2020

    and everyone knows why, look at the P/E ratios in the late 1980s

    or maybe CCP can teach the Japanese their magic GDP trick? 🙂

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