Honestly, I'm tired of this "oh they're totalitarian, so we cannot believe their statistics when it's good" stance. It looks so much like a comfortable self-deceit.
I’m tired of it too, but I think it’s better than “not use any data points” or “trust the super subjective data points put out by a totalitarian regime so they aren’t comparable to other countries.”
I don’t think the US is perfect, but economic indicators that they put out are probably as good as they get, all things considered.
But I think the complaint was more to say why they weren’t looking at other data they would like, and other countries provide reliably, and instead must limit to what the US and other countries report.
I understand this sentiment when it's applied to shithole countries where statistics cannot be verified in meaningful ways. But China is too big and too integrated into the world economics to fake or dismiss Chinese data. You can independently prove a lot of Chinese data by comparing it with their western trade counterparts.
Chinese statistics are notoriously biased. There is a cottage industry of hedge funds using satellite imagery to correct their figures and trade on it.
That is the national government's approach, for the most part: tweak the basket of goods you use for inflation here, pick the best looking among several measures there, and so on. The overt manipulation occurs at the subnational level: Chinese statistical work is heavily decentralized and officials are promoted (or not) partially on the basis of meeting growth targets. The national government corrects for this to some degree - but estimating just how manipulated the data is is hard, and provides another lever you can pull to push it one way or another.
Federal statistical agencies in the US conduct more and better direct research and report through fewer (though not zero) layers of politically motivated actors.
https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-july-exports-impo...
Source?