Revised GDP numbers: An instance of official statistics gone political?

Whatever the claims about the new GDP numbers being technically superior to earlier estimates, their public credibility depends on their passing some reality checks, writes T N Ninan

Back in 2007, the then US ambassador in China met Li Keqiang, who at the time was the Chinese Communist Party secretary for Liaoning and is now China’s prime minister. Li told the envoy that the GDP (gross domestic product) numbers were unreliable, and that he went by three real-sector indicators: railway cargo volume, electricity consumption and loans disbursed by banks. Building on that, the Economist magazine constructed a Li Keqiang Index. Subsequent analysis showed that the index was more relevant than GDP for almost every commodity and currency.
 
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