Introduction:
instead of soon becoming the largest economy in the world, China’s economy is only about a third of the size of the mighty U.S. economy.
having much lower GDP also means that China’s debt levels are actually much higher, relative to the size of its economy, meaning that its debt-fueled property bubble is much more dangerous than we thought.
Method:
Martinez looked at 184 countries between 1992 to 2008 and compared the growth of lights at night in each country to the growth of GDP that each country reported.
Autocratic countries typically reported a whopping 35% higher GDP growth numbers compared to night-time lights growth.
China’s GDP growth between 1992 and 2008 was likely 4.9% per year, rather than its average reported growth of 6.3%.
This is literally the dumbest measurement I’ve ever heard of.
Look if you aren’t wasting lots of electricity all night long then it’s clear your economy is a sad smol bean and you’re lying about it.
Also, they compare China to India in this blog post, talking as if India isn’t fucking known (under Modi at least) for being authoritarian and spoofing their GDP. Sheer anti-China brain worms.