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Why you can trust SCMP
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'Macau beats HK in GDP growth'

SCMP headline, April 1

True, but old news. Macau has already long enjoyed much higher growth rates for gross domestic product than Hong Kong has done. In the second quarter of 2004, for instance, it posted a GDP growth rate of 50 per cent. Hong Kong has never done this.

The real news is that grimy, squalid, poverty-stricken old Macau last year also posted a higher GDP per capita than Hong Kong did. It's true. The numbers say that GDP per head in Hong Kong last year was HK$213,000 and in Macau it was the equivalent of HK$217,000 at the official Macau pataca exchange rate of 1.0248.

Now it isn't often that a commentator who relies as much on statistics as I do will quote the old line that there are two kinds of lies, the common and the statistical, or tell you that the statistical is the more common of the two.

But the fact is that I see no reason to change my description of Macau as 'grimy, squalid, poverty-stricken and old'.

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