China Stats Even Shakier Than Thought? -- By Walter Russell Mead, The American Interest

Trees may not grow to the sky, but they can tell tall tales about their height.

That at least is what we can infer from this piece in the New York Times, where reporter Keith Bradsher inspects some recent economic signals coming out of China. The closer he looks, the less reliable those statistics appear.

Many China hands follow the advice of Li Keqiang who is reported by Wikileaks to have told a US diplomat that the only statistics really worth tracking are electricity use, rail shipments and bank lending. The rest are widely understood to be make-believe, with local officials telling party authorities in Beijing what they want to hear.

But if Bradsher’s piece gets it right, even those statistics don’t tell the truth.

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