How severe is China’s slowdown
Fernald and al. have constructed a China Cyclical Activity Tracker — China CAT for short — which uses a combination of eight non-GDP indicators to measure deviations in year-over-year growth from the underlying trend. They find that:
- The Chinese economy has slowed over the past two years from above trend to slightly below trend and therefore there is no evidence of collapse;
- Relative to our index, China’s official GDP statistics appear excessively smooth, particularly over the post-financial crisis period;
- As of mid-2019, the reported growth rates appear consistent with the China CAT
How Severe Is China’s Slowdown? Evidence from China CAT
By: John Fernald, Neil Gerstein, Mark Spiegel – Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco
