Making Sense of a Complex China

Ten years ago, China barely registered on global financial markets. Today, it is front and center. Yet, the market’s understanding of the world’s second-largest economy has struggled to catch up. It is big and foreign and suffers from a serious lack of economic data, meaning speculation can be as important as fact.

So here are five simple points that go a long way to understanding one of the world’s most complex places:

First, China doesn’t publish gross-domestic-product data in the same way as other countries. It publishes a growth rate, but no quarterly breakdown of real demand. It is one of two Asian nations that don’t publish such data. The other one is Laos.