Chart of the week: tracking Chinese growth by satellite

published 17 November 2017

China's official data is notoriously unreliable, so investors use their own gauges to measure the economy. Enter the China Satellite Manufacturing Index. A company called SpaceKnow monitors more than 6,000 industrial facilities acrossChinaby satellite to track manufacturing activity. Data from the 2.2 million observation points are distilled into the index. The indicator has worked well, WirtschaftsWoche notes. It depicted the slump in 2008/09 as the world stopped buying Chinese exports, the rebound, the growth scare of 2015/16 and the subsequent upswing.

Viewpoint

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