Monday, August 10, 2009

Statistics - PRC style

The latest in the Rio v PRC iron ore soap opera is China's claim that the "spying" by Rio staff have cost Chinese steel industry US$100 billion over the last six years. No explanation has been given for how they reached this number, but given that the total of China's iron ore exports over that six year period also came to about US$100 billion, the sellers of iron ore to China would have had to give their product away for the last six years in order to justify China's claims. Somehow, I just can't see that happening.

For those who have not seen the annual phenomena of the sum of the GDPs of China's 31 provinces and municipalities exceeding the national GDP this makes interesting reading and effectively casts considerable doubt over most statistics coming out of the PRC.

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