The View | China's GDP numbers invite disbelief and pointed jokes

In the midst of a financial market meltdown, China last week unveiled better than expected GDP growth of 7 percent for the second quarter. Digital networks immediately lit up with jokes, barbs and scorn.

Perhaps the numbers were “hedonically double seasonally adjusted,” someone cracked on venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s popular Twitter feed.

“Smoke…meet mirror,” read a comment on an article in The Wall Street Journal quoting China data doubters.

“Why not 7.5 percent or even 8 percent? Who gives a %$#*? There is not an ounce of truth in those reports and people on the ground can obviously know that,” a commenter on SCMP.com opined.

Doubts about Chinese data go back decades – and frankly are sometimes on par with “the moon-landing never happened” conspiracy theories. As if it’s all been faked - the iron-ore freighters steaming through the oceans towards China, the equivalent of 10 Manhattan skylines that went up each year, the vast and smoky industrial zones and trillions of dollars in foreign exchange reserves.

One issue is that China’s decades-long economic expansion defies normal expectations; fantastic booms are supposed to be punctuated by roof-jumping type busts. Another issue is that virtually no-one – not even Premier Li Keqiang – will vouch for the numbers down to the last decimal point. Instead, informed believers take the view that China’s official data is reasonably descriptive of economic activity, if not precisely accurate.