Free Republic

The world’s second-largest economy grew by 6.1% in 2019, making last year China’s worst economic performance since 1990, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Friday. The figure is within Beijing’s official target of 6.0% to 6.5%, but down from 6.6% in 2018. The economy faces “downward pressure” and “instability sources and risk points” abroad are increasing, the government said in a statement. […] The World Bank said in a report this month that weakening exports in China had compounded the impact of its ongoing slowdown in domestic demand. But analysts noted that China’s slowdown is...

Enodo Economics recalculation of China’s first quarter real GDP growth was only +2% versus the +5.6% number officially reported by the central government. The U.S. Federal Reserve recently warned that since China supposedly transitioned from a communist command economy in 1993, “Cooking the Books” by falsifying provincial level data continues to be a common problem due to a lack of “political independence.” China’s official Xinhua News reported in mid-April that first quarter GDP growth jumped to 5.6 percent “largely propelled by the country's fiscal stimulus as well as energetic reform and opening-up. But Diana Choyleva at Enodo Economics, who...

<p>PARIS -- French libraries are said to file their nation's constitutions -- there have been more than a dozen since 1789; the current one is a relatively ancient 49 years old -- under periodicals. Now Nicolas Sarkozy, France's peripatetic new president, has created a commission on constitutional reform. The commission includes Jack Lang who, as minister of culture in 1983 under President Francois Mitterrand, staged a sublimely unserious conference on the (supposed) world economic crisis, featuring the likes of Sophia Loren, Susan Sontag and Norman Mailer.</p>

America's Gross Domestic Product, and how it has grown over the last 22 years, is the key factor when comparing President Bush's tax relief package with Ronald Reagan's. After all, if you owed $5 as ten-year-old, it's hardly equal to owing $5 as a 32-year-old - even with inflation. Likewise, our GDP has grown - and will be larger still in 10 years. The mistake people make is judging this ten-year tax cut based on today's GDP. You should no more do that than you would plan to make the same income in 10 years than you do today, with...

"If we didn't have China I would be suicidal," chief Morgan Stanley economist Stephen Roach said this month. "It's the only bright spot in the world economy." And bright spot it is: Beijing announced that its gross domestic product grew 8 percent last year. The rate is so good that some are wondering whether the People's Republic can become the new engine for world growth. From today's perspective it certainly looks as if it will. No other major economy will report anything near 8 percent for 2002, and many agree that the prospects for future Chinese growth are rosy. "China...