China investors vexed as economic data slips into information black hole amid slowdown
- China paused releasing unemployment figures for the 16-24 and 25-59 age groups, citing the need to further improve and optimise the labour-force survey statistics
- Hundreds of data series released by statistics bureaus at different levels of the government have also been discontinued in the recent years
China’s decision to halt a widely-watched youth jobless rate is expected to vex foreign investors by making it harder to size up the world’s second-largest economy after crackdowns on consulting firms, increased scrutiny on cross-border data transfers and a newly enacted anti-espionage law.
A search on Wind, a Bloomberg-like Chinese terminal service widely used by domestic economists, traders and hedge fund managers, this week found that hundreds of data series released by statistics bureaus at different levels of the government had been discontinued in recent years.
We need to have a line of sight that allows us to feel reasonably assured about how we will develop in the future
Foreign investor confidence has already been battered by China’s zero-Covid strategy, while they are also facing pressure to shift supply chains amid China’s economic slowdown.
Much of the discontinued data on Wind focused on regional economic figures or industry-specific numbers, which made them less noticeable compared to the youth unemployment rate.