I remember reading about how regional Chinese governments measure economic growth, given that the numbers they have are doctored. One proxy was electricity usage.
I remember reading about how regional Chinese governments measure economic growth, given that the numbers they have are doctored. One proxy was electricity usage.
Now obsolete Le KeQiang Index (LKI): power, rail freight volume, bank loans which were harder to manipulate. But this was like pre 2005s when Li was in charge of Liaoning before became premiere. Western analysists picked up on it form wikileaks and started using it as proxy - relevancy dropped when heavy industry era ended in mid 2010s. It's 2025, PRC heavily digitalized in last 20 years, frankly it's pretty absurd to believe central gov has significant problems with local gov metric opacity these days. As in local govs will still try to game, but central gov / NBS or relevant stats bureau has been adjusting down accordingly because they have access to stupid amount of proxy data now.
That's actually mentioned in the article. The information came from a diplomatic cable. It's very damning, although as evidence it does come down to one (important) person's view.
Li Keqiang also made those comments over a decade ago at this point. The Chinese economy has changed a lot in that time.
I wonder how Bitcoin mining impacted that metric. And if that's why China kept cracking down on Bitcoin.