奇怪的中國與印度經濟增長數據

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.

關於全球經濟，有一件事是確定的，那就是它正在放緩。我們不清楚的是問題有多嚴重，因爲中國和印度這兩個最大的新興市場發佈的官方數據不合情理。

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.

在近日於北京召開的全國人大會議上，中國將其官方增長目標降低至“7%左右”，但該數值仍比許多分析師對當前增速的獨立估計值高出2至3個百分點。上月，印度政府使用了一種新方法來宣稱其經濟今年將增長8%，再次誇口其增速將超過中國。許多外部人士對印度的聲明也表示懷疑。

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]

兩國的問題在於，官方增長數據遠高於計算中各組成部分的加總。經濟增長是投資、貿易以及消費者和政府支出的增長總和。許多投資者做了一下算術，結果發現，中國或印度的上述各部分加總達不到7%的增速。中國經濟主要受到投資的推動，而投資已經急劇放緩。印度經濟增長的動力來自消費者，而從摩托車到餐飲的所有消費一直在下降。

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.

官方數據也與企業報告的業績結果不符。在繁榮時期，企業收入的增速往往高於經濟增速，但如今中國經通脹調整後的企業收入增速爲4.5%，而印度是6.4%。在中國，只有很少的行業（例如網絡零售）的增速達到7%。那麼這兩個經濟體的增速如何能夠達到7%以上呢？許多經濟學家接受官方說法以避免惹惱北京和新德里，但拿出真金白銀投資的投資者不會接受。

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.

中國多年來一直受到外界對其“奇怪數據”的質疑。懷疑者表示，北京方面人爲調整其數據讓增長顯得既快又穩定，從而防止社會發生動盪。更可能的情況是，中國只有在增長低於官方目標的時候纔會人爲調整這些數據，這在最近發生了兩次：一次是在1998年亞洲金融危機期間，另一次是自2012年中期以來。

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，印度最新的增長數據看起來更像是笨手笨腳胡亂計算的結果，而不是一個精於算計的政治機器的工作成果。新德里最近改革了其數據收集方法以挖掘更廣泛的數據來源，這很有意義。然而，隨後的數據修正過於草率，以至於許多人質疑這些數據的可信度。印度官僚常常會拿某個沒壞的東西動手修理，直到它壞爲止，這就是個典型的例子。

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.

調整後的新數據將印度在2013年的GDP增速從預估的5%提高至6.9%，去年進一步加速至7.4%。在政府抑制支出、投資疲弱和信貸增長几乎停滯之際，人們很難理解印度經濟怎麼能一直加速增長。

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.

具有諷刺意味的是，即便按照獨立估計數據，印度和中國的增速可能仍是其他所有新興國家平均增速（2.5%）的兩倍。它們沒有像巴西那樣增長停滯，也沒有像俄羅斯那樣收縮。新德里沒有理由誇大數據，如果誇大增長，他們自己的信譽可能受損。

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，那會很明智，後者屢次表達了對調整後數據的懷疑。中國政府最好是效仿上海地方政府的做法——上海是中國首個放棄制定官方增長目標的地方政府。

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.

如果沒有中國和印度的可靠數據，那就很難搞清楚世界經濟的增速——中國和印度總共佔到全球GDP增長的逾三分之一。這就是投資者不斷胡亂猜測的原因。對任何在這些數據上有切實利益關係的人來說，寧可有大致正確的數據，也不願有肯定錯誤的數據。