Taps Coogan – April 16th, 2021

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Early this year, Leland Miller, CEO of China Beige Book International and one of the best informed observers of China’s economy, repeatedly went on the record to say that China was essentially revising its 2019 GDP lower in order to make 2020 GDP figure look better than it really was.

With China’s first quarter of 2021 GDP number now imminent, Mr. Miller is striking a notably more bullish tone, saying that China’s GDP number “is going to be so big that people aren’t going to be able to pay attention to anything other than just how big this number is… In our data, retail is doing much better after really being the laggard throughout all of 2020…“

All official Chinese GDP data should be taken with a Mount Everest sized serving of salt. However, for months we’ve been sharing stories about the record breaking jump in demand for manufactured goods and the shipping disruptions it has caused. By now it should be clear that the helicopter money being spread around in the US and elsewhere is, in no small way, flowing to China via imports, setting them up to report what is likely to be blistering growth in the first quarter.

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