> Honestly, I'm tired of this "oh they're totalitarian, so we cannot believe their statistics when it's good" stance. It looks so much like a comfortable self-deceit.

I’m tired of it too, but I think it’s better than “not use any data points” or “trust the super subjective data points put out by a totalitarian regime so they aren’t comparable to other countries.”

I don’t think the US is perfect, but economic indicators that they put out are probably as good as they get, all things considered.

> I’m tired of it too, but I think it’s better than “not use any data points” or “trust the super subjective data points put out by a totalitarian regime so they aren’t comparable to other countries.”

I understand this sentiment when it's applied to shithole countries where statistics cannot be verified in meaningful ways. But China is too big and too integrated into the world economics to fake or dismiss Chinese data. You can independently prove a lot of Chinese data by comparing it with their western trade counterparts.

> China is too big and too integrated into the world economics to fake or dismiss Chinese data

Chinese statistics are notoriously biased. There is a cottage industry of hedge funds using satellite imagery to correct their figures and trade on it.

Can you name some of these hedge funds?

I know someone in the commodity business who uses satellite imagery for monitoring demand.

I don’t see how you can trust numbers from a government which fairly openly treats truth as malleable. Also, cadres are evaluated to a certain extent on their economic metrics, and of course a metric ceases to be reliable when your evaluation depends on it. But the real kicker is that the outgoing prime minister, Li Keqiang, did not trust the official numbers and developed his own calculation using other numbers. [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Keqiang_index

Export data has a counterparty though, so I don't see how it's anything more than a thought terminating cliché.

Right, in this case I like using the counterparty and US imports from China in place of what we want.

But I think the complaint was more to say why they weren’t looking at other data they would like, and other countries provide reliably, and instead must limit to what the US and other countries report.

Yeah the US leadership is smart enough to almost never lie outright. There are lots of more nuanced ways to technically tell the truth but still significantly warp the information to your benefit. I’m kind of surprised that China seems to be less savvy to this approach.

> There are lots of more nuanced ways to technically tell the truth but still significantly warp the information to your benefit. I’m kind of surprised that China seems to be less savvy to this approach.

That is the national government's approach, for the most part: tweak the basket of goods you use for inflation here, pick the best looking among several measures there, and so on. The overt manipulation occurs at the subnational level: Chinese statistical work is heavily decentralized and officials are promoted (or not) partially on the basis of meeting growth targets. The national government corrects for this to some degree - but estimating just how manipulated the data is is hard, and provides another lever you can pull to push it one way or another.

Federal statistical agencies in the US conduct more and better direct research and report through fewer (though not zero) layers of politically motivated actors.

It's just not that people distrust Chinese statistics, it's that they have stopped publishing statistics.

> US import from China is back to pre-COVID volumes and rising.

Source?

Here you go, hope US government is reliable enough for you

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c5700.html

This data shows that imports from China are down significantly year on year, though?

Seems like it.

Can’t respond to this other user but their source confirms that there is a consistent drop in imports from China since late last year (goes down each month.). Saying “we’re back to pre-Covid levels” is a strange thing to say when Covid clearly saw a huge spike in imports, which are now decreasing. Their framing of this entire conversation seems incredibly dishonest.

US import could be clearing out stock at firesale since lots of Chinese manufacturing is liquidating. China imports are declining and IMO (I could be wrong) more telling for long-term producer health (china is not exactly resource independent):

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-july-exports-impo...

One need only compare the official Beijing air quality number against what you see on the ground to know that you simply cannot trust official Chinese reports.