China’s Reluctant Release of Economic Data Is Considered Avoiding Distraction

• China delayed the release important economic data, including third quarter GDP, that was due to be released this week.
• This has sparked speculation that China may not want to release this data in a national congress.
• Analysts claim that China is holding off on releasing the information so that the focus of the Communist Party meeting is on it.

A delay in releasing key Chinese economic data — which coincided with a once-in-five years Communist Party meeting — has sparked speculation that Beijing is deliberately concealing the numbers over how bad they look. 

China delayed the release economic data, which were due to go out this week, because of the 20th National Congress, Chinese Communist Party. President Xi JinpingIs poised to secure an unprecedented third term as president.

The postponement of the data — GDP in particular — has raised speculation that the numbers are deliberately being hidden. Analysts believe that this is unlikely to be true.

China wants everyone to be focused on the political meeting, and not its economy.

Bo Zhuang, senior sovereign analyst with Loomis Sayles’ Boston-based investment management company, said to Insider that “I don’t believe the delay is due to bad data.” “Beijing wants everyone to pay attention to the Congress and not economic data.

The release of China’s third quarter GDP data was scheduled to take place at 10 a.m. EST today. However, the delay has been reported by the National Bureau of Statistics.A number of statistics, including those on industrial production, fixed assets investment, and real estate sales, have been delayed. 

Zhuang said that while delays in the monthly release of statistical data are “quite uncommon”, they are not unusual. According to Zhuang, China has delayed the release monthly economic data, such as retail sales and inflation, for long public holidays in August 2009, and September 2015.

It’s not the first time Beijing has delayed GDP data release.

COVID-19: China’s debt crisis causes a drop in GDP 

China’s economy has been ruined Lockdowns in sporadic instancesAmidst the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there is an opportunity to be proactive. Defeat the debt crisisIts GDP grew only 0.4% between 2000 and 2005 Second quarter 2022 from a year earlier — the slowest pace since the data started being published in 1992. This excludes a 6.9% decrease in year-over-year growth in the first three months of 2020, when the pandemic was just beginning.

Analysts don’t anticipate such a poor showing in the third-quarter, according to economists polled. ReutersChina’s economy is expected to grow by 3.4% compared to a year ago. This is against China’s 2022 GDP growth target at 5.5%. It is a guideline and not a hard target. BloombergReports from August

The delay in data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics was not explained by the Chinese government. But Zhao Chenxin, the deputy head of China’s National Development and Reform Commission — a body in charge of macroeconomic planning — gave a positive assessment of the economy at a press conference on Monday, saying it “rebounded significantly” in the third quarter, according to state news agency Xinhua.

Analysts at ING said Monday they don’t think the delay is due to “particularly weak” data — although the numbers are also not likely to paint a very positive picture of the Chinese economy.

“Rather, it suggests that the government believes 20th Party Congress to be the most important thing in China right now, and would like avoid other information flow that could create mixed signals,” wrote Robert Carnell (the Asia Pacific research chief at ING) and Iris Pang (the chief economic economist for Greater China, at the Dutch bank, ING).