This article is an original work titled 'Finance makes it clear' and has been published simultaneously on various platforms. Reproduction is strictly prohibited.
The national statistical department has released the latest economic data, which includes China's GDP data.
In the first three quarters of this year, China's total GDP reached 91.3 trillion yuan, and after deducting the impact of prices, the growth rate still reached an astonishing 5.2%.
However, foreign media websites have reported this data, pointing out that China's GDP has shown negative growth.
Why? Is the gap widening?
What about the GDP of the United States?
01
Firstly, let's take a look at some of the data released by the statistical department, which is overall exciting.
Our GDP growth rate reached 5.5% in the first half of this year, and the currently announced growth rate for the first three quarters is 5.2%, indicating a slight decrease in growth rate.
This is due to the growth rate falling back to 4.9% in the third quarter, but still higher than the 4.5% in the first quarter.
Is this because our growth rate has slowed down?
That's not the case, it's related to the benchmark for comparison. In the second quarter of this year, our growth rate was as high as 6.3%, corresponding to the second quarter of last year.
In the second quarter of last year, several cities and regions, including Shanghai, had to close down due to the impact of the epidemic, which had a significant impact on China's economic growth.
It is precisely because the base in the second quarter of last year was relatively low that the year-on-year growth rate in the second quarter of this year was relatively high.
If we look at it in a different way, the GDP growth rate in the third quarter will reach 1.3% month on month. If we follow the practice of the United States, it will reach an annual rate of 5.2% month on month.
This is enough to indicate that the economic aggregate in the third quarter is higher than that in the second quarter.
02
From the analysis of these data, we can clearly see that China's economy is still growing, so why do some people say there has been negative growth?
Foreign media are clearly calculated in US dollars.
Based on the midpoint between the Chinese yuan and the US dollar, the average depreciation in the first nine months of this year was about 5.8%.
This magnitude is greater than the growth rate of GDP, which means that when China's GDP is calculated in US dollars, it not only does not increase, but also slightly decreases.
But in fact, this is just a number game, only when comparing with different countries, do we need to price it in US dollars.
If not denominated in US dollars and using another purchasing power standard advocated by the United Nations, China's GDP would have surpassed that of the United States a few years ago.
This also indicates that although the GDP of the United States is high, it is a false high, and the actual purchasing power is not as good as our GDP.
03
So, what about the GDP of the United States?
Since we were the first to release the data for the third quarter, while the United States has not yet released it, we can compare the data for the first half of this year.
In the first half of this year, the GDP of the United States reached $13.24 trillion, which means it is likely to exceed $26000 billion for the entire year, a slight increase compared to last year, but the growth rate has significantly decreased.
Of course, this is also related to a slight decrease in the inflation level in the United States. The actual growth rate in the United States is still similar to last year, maintaining around 2%, still lower than ours.
From an inflation perspective, our GDP quality is much higher than that of the United States.
Because in nominal GDP terms, the growth rate in the first three quarters of this year was 4.9%, which is lower than the actual growth rate after deducting prices.
It can be seen that prices have not contributed to our nominal GDP growth because prices have fallen.
The United States, on the other hand, has a significantly higher nominal GDP growth rate than the actual growth rate due to extremely high inflation.
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