Statistics about the state of economic play in China can be a sensitive topic which meant that a recent session with a visiting team from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistics had to be played with a particularly delicate diplomatic touch. That having been said  the  latest ruminations from the Bank of England – no less- suggest that despite the  commendable  fastidiousness with  which they are assembled, actually understanding what our own economic statistics are telling us is far from straightforward.

Maybe you are one of those people who is more than a bit suspicious about some of those stunning economic numbers that emerge from China. If so, it won’t surprise you to learn that your reservations are held by a lot of  other people. You might, though, be more than a little intrigued to discover that your scepticism is shared by no less a personage than one  Li Keqiang.  Mr Li is reported to have said is that the Chinese economic statistics for GDP were ‘man-made’ and so were unreliable. Mr Li, you may recall, is the current number two in the Chinese hierarchy and as premier has final responsibility for the direction of the economy, so it’s an interesting position for him to have to say the least.

To be fair to Mr Li we learned of his misgivings from private comments he apparently made to the US Ambassador to China which have been distributed via the good offices of WikiLeaks. It’s probably not a view he really wanted to share so candidly with the world as a whole.  Its also the case that this revelation dates back to 2007 when he was merely governor of Liaoning province. He did go on to  say that he was more convinced that measuring  electricity consumption, rail cargo and loans issued were a more telling benchmark of what is going on – and  less susceptible to the machinations of well ( or otherwise) intentioned economists.

These being - perhaps – the very sort of people who work for the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Statistic ?

In the event,  our Chinese visitors were particularly interested in the way in which the numbers feed into – and emerge from – the rather different economic planning processes that we currently have here at the city and more local levels. There was a lot of technical interest in the key relationships in the models that underpin the plans. For example, this much land developed, this much floorspace built, this many jobs created, they asked. How do you know  exactly how those things all relate to one another ?

Perhaps even more significantly there was a lot on interest in the processes in place that actually assessed the outputs of the plan. Who collects those statistics – how do they do it – who are they responsible to and just how independent are they of the planners and the politicians who conceived the plan in the first place.

Finally – and perhaps most tellingly – there was also a concentration in their questions on what happens if the plan isn’t actually being achieved or delivered. How might this actually be admitted. Who would take responsibility? What ( maybe just a little ominously) would be the consequences for the politicians and planners in the frame ?  

There might just be a few questions there that we don’t ask ourselves quite often enough.

One got an inkling though that our friends from the Beijing Bureau could  be anticipating that ( in the light of Mr Li’s reservations)  their own work might be the subject of a more searching scrutiny than they had been accustomed to and were keenly interested in whether their colleagues here have to  manage that already.

In the light of this it was even more instructive than usual to attend the latest Bank of England Quarterly Briefing at day or so after meeting the Beijing team. The Bank tends to remain fairly magisterial in its utterances but what is abundantly  clear is that many of the key statistical relationships that it has used to navigate through the economy for decades have broken down -  for the time being at least. Wages and inflation, employment and outputs aren’t moving as they expect them to do while the productivity gap and the scale of slack in the economy continue to mystify.

Recovery is clearly underway but it’s not generating  many of the more upbeat features we would expect. Economists being economists there is no shortage of speculation as to what is going on but a lot of this has - to adopt Premier Li views - the feel of being man-made and maybe unreliable.

In the light of this the  questions from our friends in Beijing as to who will be able to tell if the economic plan is failing and who will carry the can if it does,  echoed rather keenly