“It’s extremely difficult and close to impossible to calculate the quarter-on-quarter growth rate in China,” Lu said.
Ma Jiantang (馬建堂), commissioner of the statistics bureau, says the bureau wanted to create a reporting system like those of other countries.
“We are doing research right now on setting up this system,” Ma said last month, though he gave no timetable.
Last month, the bureau made the surprise announcement that it was raising 2007’s annual growth rate from an already stunning 11.9 percent. That meant China surpassed Germany that year to become the third-largest economy after the US and Japan — a milestone that went undetected at the time.
For this year, forecasts of full-year growth are as low as 5 percent — the best of any major country but China’s weakest in nearly two decades.
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