Small change: China tweaks how it calculates GDP, adding US$130b to size of economy
New calculation includes spending on research and development to better reflect the contribution of innovation to growth, statistics bureau says
The National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday announced a tweak to the way it calculated the economy’s size, revising up gross domestic product for last year by about US$130 billion.
The bureau said spending on research and development was included in the formula to bring the calculations in line with United Nations recommended international standards and to better “reflect the contribution to growth from innovation”.
The change is the latest effort to retool the statistics system to keep up with the shift from a state-dominated planned economy to one more reliant on services.
The United States made a similar tweak in 2013 to include knowledge and artistic input, revising up US growth in 2012 from 2.2 per cent to 2.8 per cent. India made the switch in January 2015, immediately increasing the country’s GDP growth for the 2013-2014 fiscal year from 4.7 per cent to 6.9 per cent.
The change made only a slight difference to the mainland’s GDP growth figures. For 2015, the growth rate calculated using the new method was 0.04 percentage points higher than the previous estimate, the bureau said.
There are people out there who simply don’t believe the economy is growing at 6 or 7 per cent