奇怪的中国与印度经济增长数据

One thing is certain about the global economy: a slowdown is under way. What we do not know is how big the problem is because the official numbers from China and India, the biggest emerging markets, do not add up.

关于全球经济，有一件事是确定的，那就是它正在放缓。我们不清楚的是问题有多严重，因为中国和印度这两个最大的新兴市场发布的官方数据不合情理。

At the National People’s Congress, the annual parliamentary session that started yesterday in Beijing, China lowered its official growth target to “around 7 per cent”[check tmrw for annoucement] but that number is 2 to 3 percentage points higher than many independent estimates of the current growth rate. Last month, India’s government used a new method to claim its economy would grow 8 per cent this year, reaffirming its boast that it is growing faster than China. Many outsiders doubt India’s claim too.

在近日于北京召开的全国人大会议上，中国将其官方增长目标降低至“7%左右”，但该数值仍比许多分析师对当前增速的独立估计值高出2至3个百分点。上月，印度政府使用了一种新方法来宣称其经济今年将增长8%，再次夸口其增速将超过中国。许多外部人士对印度的声明也表示怀疑。

The problem in both countries is that the official growth number is much higher than the sum of its parts. Economic growth is the total of growth in investment, trade and spending by consumers and government; many investors are doing the maths and finding that those parts do not add up to a 7 per cent pace for China or India. [sources to follow]China’s economy is driven mainly by investment, which has slowed sharply. India’s is driven by consumers and consumption of everything from[new word to follow] motorbikes to restaurant meals has been falling.[sources t/c]

两国的问题在于，官方增长数据远高于计算中各组成部分的加总。经济增长是投资、贸易以及消费者和政府支出的增长总和。许多投资者做了一下算术，结果发现，中国或印度的上述各部分加总达不到7%的增速。中国经济主要受到投资的推动，而投资已经急剧放缓。印度经济增长的动力来自消费者，而从摩托车到餐饮的所有消费一直在下降。

Official data do not tally with what companies are reporting either. In a boom, corporate revenues tend to grow faster than the economy but today revenues are growing at an inflation-adjusted rate of 4.5 per cent in China and 6.4 per cent in India. In China, few sectors (online retail, for example) are growing as fast as 7 per cent. So how could these economies be growing at 7 per cent plus? Many economists accept the official line to avoid antagonising Beijing and New Delhi but investors with real money on the line do not.

官方数据也与企业报告的业绩结果不符。在繁荣时期，企业收入的增速往往高于经济增速，但如今中国经通胀调整后的企业收入增速为4.5%，而印度是6.4%。在中国，只有很少的行业（例如网络零售）的增速达到7%。那么这两个经济体的增速如何能够达到7%以上呢？许多经济学家接受官方说法以避免惹恼北京和新德里，但拿出真金白银投资的投资者不会接受。

Questions about “funny numbers” have dogged China for years. Sceptics say Beijing manages its data to make growth appear both high and steady to prevent social unrest. More likely, the numbers are managed only when China’s growth falls below the official target, which in the recent past has happened twice: in 1998 during the Asian financial crisis; and since mid-2012.

中国多年来一直受到外界对其“奇怪数据”的质疑。怀疑者表示，北京方面人为调整其数据让增长显得既快又稳定，从而防止社会发生动荡。更可能的情况是，中国只有在增长低于官方目标的时候才会人为调整这些数据，这在最近发生了两次：一次是在1998年亚洲金融危机期间，另一次是自2012年中期以来。

By contrast, India’s latest growth data look less like the work of a calculating political machine than the result of bungling. Delhi recently reformed its data collection to tap broader sources, which made sense. The subsequent data revision was so sloppy, however, that many now question the credibility of the numbers. This is a classic example of how Indian bureaucrats can take something that is not broken and fix it until it is.

相比之下，印度最新的增长数据看起来更像是笨手笨脚胡乱计算的结果，而不是一个精于算计的政治机器的工作成果。新德里最近改革了其数据收集方法以挖掘更广泛的数据来源，这很有意义。然而，随后的数据修正过于草率，以至于许多人质疑这些数据的可信度。印度官僚常常会拿某个没坏的东西动手修理，直到它坏为止，这就是个典型的例子。

The new numbers raise the Indian GDP growth rate for 2013 to 6.9 per cent, from the estimate of 5 per cent and show a further acceleration to 7.4 per cent for last year . It’s hard to see how India’s economy could have been accelerating when the government was restraining its spending, investment was weak and credit was barely growing.

调整后的新数据将印度在2013年的GDP增速从预估的5%提高至6.9%，去年进一步加速至7.4%。在政府抑制支出、投资疲弱和信贷增长几乎停滞之际，人们很难理解印度经济怎么能一直加速增长。

The irony is that, even by independent estimates, India and China are growing at perhaps twice the average of all other emerging countries, which is 2.5 per cent. They are not stagnating, like Brazil, or contracting, like Russia. Delhi has no reason to exaggerate the numbers. By overstating growth, they risk their own credibility.

具有讽刺意味的是，即便按照独立估计数据，印度和中国的增速可能仍是其他所有新兴国家平均增速（2.5%）的两倍。它们没有像巴西那样增长停滞，也没有像俄罗斯那样收缩。新德里没有理由夸大数据，如果夸大增长，他们自己的信誉可能受损。

India’s government would be smart to follow the lead of its central bank, which has repeatedly expressed scepticism about the revised numbers. China would be well advised to follow the lead of Shanghai, the first province to scrap its official growth target.

印度政府如果效仿其央行的做法，那会很明智，后者屡次表达了对调整后数据的怀疑。中国政府最好是效仿上海地方政府的做法——上海是中国首个放弃制定官方增长目标的地方政府。

It is tough to say how fast the world is growing without reliable data for China and India, which together account for more than a third of global GDP growth. That is why investors are churning out guesstimates. For anyone with a real stake in these numbers, it is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.

如果没有中国和印度的可靠数据，那就很难搞清楚世界经济的增速——中国和印度总共占到全球GDP增长的逾三分之一。这就是投资者不断胡乱猜测的原因。对任何在这些数据上有切实利益关系的人来说，宁可有大致正确的数据，也不愿有肯定错误的数据。