China has revised up the size of its economy in 2013 by 3.4% (the equivalent of Malaysia’s economic output!).
A nationwide economic census, conducted every five years, revealed that its gross domestic product (GDP) was 58.8 trillion yuan ($9.5tn; £6tn) last year.
The revised data was compiled by surveying 70 million businesses across the country over three months.
The new economic figures are however not expected to affect China’s 2014 growth rate.
The Chinese government set a very public growth rate of 7.5% for this year which they are widely reported to just miss out on by approximately 0.3%.
Recently confirmed by the International Monetary Fund as the world’s leading economy, China has witnessed slight slowdowns in it’s manufacturing and property sectors.
Julian Evans-Pritchard, China economist at Capital Economics said the GDP revision provides “some positive news on rebalancing”.
“The breakdown of the revision shows that the lion’s share of the increase came from the service sector. Its share of GDP increased from 46.1% to 46.9% as a result of the revision. The contribution from industry fell from 43.9% to 43.7%.”
“Today’s revision is not the end of the story,” he said. “The NBS [National Bureau of Statistics] has also been adjusting the national accounts data to bring them into line with international best practice. These changes which seem destined to be introduced next year suggest an immediate future with incredibly accurate economic figures and statistics which certainly can only be seen as a positive step.
China’s last two censuses took place in 2004, where GDP was boosted by 16.8%, and 2008, where it gained 4.4%.
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