RDP 2015-13: Seasonal Adjustment of Chinese Economic Statistics Appendix A: Data

All of the time series used in this paper are derived from official data. In most cases the monthly time series data are directly implied by published figures, but in some cases we have modified the original data to allow seasonal adjustment to be performed on a levels series at a monthly or quarterly frequency. The modifications we have made to the original data prior to seasonal adjustment are described below.

Fixed asset investment: as implied by monthly year-to-date flows, nominal original currency terms.

Industrial production: index of real value-added industrial production, derived from published year-on-year and year-to-date growth rates. Year-on-year growth rates are used to grow the index for all months except January/February where the year-to-date growth rate for February has been used. The series is initialised in 1994 using an interpolated monthly profile.

Consumer price index: as implied by published monthly percentage changes.

Merchandise export values: as published, US dollar values, ‘free on board’ basis.

Merchandise import values: as published, US dollar values, ‘cost, insurance and freight’ basis.

Credit: total stock of bank loans, break-adjusted using published flows and backcast using published year-on-year growth rates prior to June 2004, original currency terms.

Total social financing: total stock of total social financing (TSF), derived by adding the break-adjusted stock of bank loans to an estimated stock of non-bank TSF. Non-bank TSF comprises entrusted loans, trust loans, undiscounted bank accepted bills, net corporate bond issuance and non-financial enterprise equity issuance. Stocks of each component of non-bank TSF are cumulations of published flows, benchmarked to published annual stocks. Original currency terms.

Money supply: M2, as published, original currency terms.

Crude steel gross output: as published, original units (tonnes).

Rail freight volumes: as published, original physical units (tonnes).

Power generation: as published, original physical units (kilowatt hours).

Retail sales: as published, nominal, original currency terms.

Gross domestic product: constant price index, derived from published quarterly year-on-year and year-to-date growth rates. Year-on-year growth rates are used to grow the index. The series is initialised in the four quarters ending in the September quarter of 1999 using arbitrary starting values. The starting values are then iterated numerically until the discrepancy between calculated and published year-to-date growth rates is minimised.