this Fernald-Hsu-Spiegel China Cyclic Activity Tracking System (CCAT) Showing third-quarter growth was 0.26 standard deviations below trend.
figure 1: GDP year-over-year standard deviation growth is below trend (blue), CCAT (tan), Li Keqiang Index (green), and imports (red). source: CCAT/SF Federal Reserveviewed on November 8, 2023.
The detrended GDP growth rate is about 2.4%, so the value below the trend value of 0.26 is 0.62%; since the trend growth rate in the third quarter is expected to be 5.07%, the implied third quarter growth rate is 4.45%, which is slightly lower 4.9% of the official data from the National Bureau of Statistics. Interestingly, the Li Keqiang Index (the first principal component of the indicator) implies roughly the same growth rate. In both cases, the gap between the official and alternative plans for Season 2 is much wider.
Alternative calculations for BOFIT The average in the third quarter was 3.43%, and the highest/lowest range was 5.11%/2.08%.
