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Q: Why are the west being so deceptive about China's economic data?
Some major western newspapers say that international companies believe China's economic data to be true, while others say that international companies know that the data is false.
How can China be expected to know which is truth and which isn't?
10 years 32 weeks ago in Relationships - China
Bad data was a leading reason why people starved to death during the CR. There is a history of lower level people saving face by doctoring their numbers. When you then look at it from a top level no data can probably be used. However the top knows this, so I guess they just wing it.
When it comes to western companies, I am sure they are operating from a different set of data. If you're Starbucks, the parameters you need to govern your business is different than if you are Toyota. The level of investment is also different. My best guess would be that most venture into China based on the population numbers alone and the fact that a 1% market share in China is better than complete market domination in a lot of other markets.
A thing that puzzles me is e.g. IKEA. Why do they have so few stores in China. They probably don't have any reliable data and thus are doing a trial and error process.
andy74rc:
Despite the data, all big companies can afford a trial test with one or few selling points. If the business picks up, they expand. If it doesn't, they don't. And it depends very much on the business sector. Food related companies are all doing good, IKEA might be in a sector where they cannot leverage any real marketing advantage over local producers.
See what happened to Media Market for instance.
The OP is probably correct from both perspectives. Economic data is either "reliable" or "unreliable" depending on which side of the debate you sit. Chinese businesses are not alone when it comes to reinventing facts. Economic data is statistics and can be bent to state whatever message it is that you are trying to get across. "Reliable" when a company wants them to be and "unreliable" when a company is making excuses for their own failure to grasp the facts.
I wonder if this link will work through the GFW
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23968472
"China's National Bureau of Statistics has said that a county government in Yunnan province "faked" economic data, state-owned Xinhua has reported."
call me a cynic, but like a lot of government released data, it is as believable as you want it to be. At home over the last few years the government used 'positive economic growth' data as an excuse to increase taxes.
