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Thaks for all the artiles and the brief analysis. You my carry on with your report writing.

Blessed Christmas!

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GDP is the most widely reported measure throughout the world of a nation's economic performance or the health of its economy; measures the product of the nation.

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The non-availability of jobs for people who are able and willing to work and actively looking for employment at the prevailing wage rate.

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A general increase in the prices of goods and resources and fall in the purchasing value of money.

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China's Scarcity

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Shenzhen sits in subtropical south China, where four-fifths of the country's water resources flow. The monsoon brings heavy rains from April to September; at its peak, Shenzhen's more than 7 million residents see pouring rain almost every day.

So why is this city facing a serious water shortage?

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Statistics from the government show that Shenzhen is among the top 10 most water-scarce cities in China, with per capita water resources one-twelfth of the national average. Residents had less than 160 cubic meters of water available per person in 2010, significantly lower than the United Nations' definition of absolute scarcity threshold ( 500 cubic meters).

Officials attribute the lack of water to the fact that no major rivers flow through the area. Worse yet, factories used to discharge wastewater without proper treatment into what small, seasonal creeks are here, causing serious pollution and tainting local drinking water.

To ease its thirst, Shenzhen has been scrambling to import water and become more efficient. But each solution comes with its own challenge. As the city's population and economy grow, water demand is expected to outstrip supply by 2020.
Diverting the Dongjiang
Shenzhen is no stranger to water problems. In the early 1990s, the city suffered from severe droughts for three years in a row. According to Liang Ming, a former official in the Shenzhen Water Resource Bureau, some neighborhoods had running water less than three hours a day while others did not have access at all. The municipal government delivered water door to door using fire trucks.

In 1991, Liang noted in his memoir that Shenzhen's water crisis hit an extreme, with a total daily deficit of 250,000 cubic meters. This shortage forced many businesses to leave Shenzhen and local officials to turn to neighboring regions for help.

Negotiations generated a project that drops pipes into the Dongjiang River as it passes through Huizhou city, northeast of Shenzhen, sucking up nearly 1 million cubic meters of water each day. It is then pumped uphill to reservoirs in Shenzhen before entering treatment plants.

Since this $600 million diversion project began operation in 2001, it has become a lifeline for the city. Municipal officials love the project so much they started a second phase in 2006 to increase its capacity.

Currently, the Dongjiang water diversion project - stretching 106 kilometers long and consisting of 17 tunnels and six water pumping stations - meets more than 70 percent of Shenzhen's water demand. The imported water also supports the production of goods equivalent to one-third of the total economic output from the city.

However, this solution has not come without a price.
Pumping Water, Burning Through Energy
Moving water demands energy. Statistics on the energy consumed by the Dongjiang water diversion project - both for transferring the water and the embedded energy required in its construction - have not been calculated, but a statement from a local utility gives a clue.

The Guangdong Power Grid Company said in 2009 that the diversion project was one of its largest energy consumers in Huicheng district of Huizhou city. The district is a fast-expanding electronics manufacturing hub with a population of more than 1 million people. That alone is eye-opening, but the estimate only took into account energy consumed during the project's first phase. The utility also projected energy consumption would increase by one-third when the second phase of the project went online in 2010.

Since the region gets most of its energy from coal-fired power plants, the more electricity the water diversion project requires, the more coal is burned to generate that electricity. At stake are air quality and a substantial amount of heat-trapping carbon emissions.

On top of that is increasing competition. "Chinese cities in recent years have begun to compete for water resources," said the municipal government in a 2010 statement. "It has become more and more difficult for Shenzhen to import water."
Reduce, Reuse, and Capture
As a result, Shenzhen policymakers have turned their eyes to unconventional water sources. To promote the use of reclaimed water, also known as gray water, for instance, more than a dozen wastewater recycling plants are now up and running in the city.

According to Liu Chengfei, an official of the Shenzhen Municipal Water Affairs Bureau, at least 60 percent of wastewater in the city was processed for reuse last year. Liu said the government is now considering requiring all wastewater treatment plants to install water recycling capabilities.

While Shenzhen has made notable progress in recycling wastewater, getting citizens to use it is another matter. In 2013, the latest official data available, less than five percent of reclaimed water was used for flushing toilets or greening gardens. The majority, the government notes, ended up in rivers.

"The deployment of reclaimed water in Shenzhen is still in its early stage," said Luo Yibing, who is in charge of the water supply department at the Shenzhen Municipal Water Affairs Bureau.

As Luo explained, recovering clean water from wastewater costs almost as much, if not more than, importing water. The use of reclaimed water requires separate plumbing systems for fresh water and gray water, said Luo. However, telephone lines, natural gas pipes, and other wires have already created a spider's web underneath the city, leaving little space for another system. Officials also face some public resistance due to qualms about gray water's safety and the possibility of leaks mixing with the drinking supply.

Shenzhen's search for water has opened the door to a new water-sensitive urban design. Known as "sponge city," the new design aims to increase the absorptive capacity of cities so they can withstand heavy rain and reuse it later. Shenzhen has created more green surfaces, like vegetated roofs, and started constructing permeable pavements to help catch rain.

In the Mass Sports Center of Guangming district at least 10,000 cubic meters of water are saved annually through its plaza made of porous bricks and flood-tolerant plants. The water is stored in a cistern buried below the plaza and then used for greening or for cleaning facilities.

Such passive rainwater capture not only helps alleviate water scarcity but also helps conserve energy. As Che Wu, a professor at Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, explained, the use of wetlands, rain gardens, and permeable pavements enhances cities' resilience to extreme weather events. As a result, cities become less dependent on drains, storm sewers, and other human-engineered infrastructure, which, in turn, reduces the amount of energy used to build these structures.

In addition, wetlands, rain gardens, and green roofs remove silt and pollutants from storm-water runoffs and act as natural filtration to help Shenzhen combat pollution.

Besides the supply side efforts, Shenzhen has taken some preliminary steps to reduce demand. The city has introduced a ladder pricing system for residential water use, one of the earliest in the nation. The new pricing mechanism encourages conservation by charging households once consumption surpasses a certain level at a rate that increases significantly which each additional cubic meter.

The city has also implemented various water conservation measures to reduce industrial consumption, closing a number of dyeing factories, leather manufacturers, and other water-intensive businesses. Those that stay have to comply with an annual water usage quota program and use no more than the limit without incurring a penalty.

All hotels, office buildings, and other public facilities are required to use water-saving appliances. Thermal power plants, the city's major water consumers, have also switched from using fresh water for cooling to reclaimed water or seawater.
Progress, But the Task Grows Larger
The result: Shenzhen has scaled down its water use per 10,000 yuan gross domestic product from 51.5 cubic meters in 2003 to 13.2 cubic meters in 2013. Municipal officials say that figure is the lowest among all Chinese cities.

Despite its growing efficiency, however, the total amount of water Shenzhen consumes is still increasing. Total consumption climbed to 1.9 billion cubic meters in 2013, 500 million cubic meters more than a decade ago. As its appetite grows, Shenzhen will likely see a water deficit of 694 million cubic meters per year by 2020, according to government projections.

"The actual number might not be that huge, thanks to our better-than-expected progress in water conservation," said Luo of the Shenzhen Municipal Water Affairs Bureau. "But there will be a gap."

The solution? "We are considering transferring water from Xijiang River," Luo said, referring to a main stem of the Pearl River far away from the city. The energy costs of the Dongjiang water diversion project seem to have been deemed acceptable. But whether the new diversion project can quench the city's seemingly unending thirst - and at what cost - remains a question mark.
Coco Liu is an award-winning journalist with a reporting focus on China's energy and climate change issues. Special thanks to the Wilson Center's China Environment Forum.

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One Chinese City's Struggle With Water Scarcity

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Shenzhen sits in subtropical south China, where four-fifths of the country's water resources flow. The monsoon brings heavy rains from April to September; at its peak, Shenzhen's more than 7 million residents see pouring rain almost every day. So why is this city facing a serious water shortage? Enjoying this article?

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China's greatest strength of having one of the world's biggest population is their weakness.

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China has a major problem in scarcity and this major problem is Water. China faces a major water pollution crisis where nearly 60% of their ground water is polluted. Water scarcity is tied up with complex questions about energy use, urbanization, and modernization. In agriculture matters, china is facing scarce rainfall, causing them to only receive 20% of china's total moisture from rainfall. the Chinese government is very aware of the problem and is taking concrete steps to solve it, both by increasing efficiency and decreasing water use. To solve the problem, China has been working on a mega-project to bring water from the moisture-rich south to the arid north. They will use three canals to move 44.8 billion cubic meters of water each year.

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the state of being scarce of something or in short supply ; shortage

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China's CPI rose by 1.3% as compared to a year earlier, missing its forecast value of 1.5% in October, which is less than the 1.6% increase in September as compared to a year earlier in showing a disinflation in the Chinese economy.

The trend resumed the downward trend that started in 2014.

It is predicted that inflation will average 1.5% in 2015. While the Chinese government set an inflation target of 3% for the year 2015.

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Despite all the ups and downs in China’s economy over the past decade, its official unemployment rate has remained incredibly stable. It has remained so stable that it was hard to believe. The registered urban jobless rate is just 4.04% as of today. China created 10.66 million new jobs for urban residents just recently, spokesperson of the ministry of human resource and social security, li zhong told press conference recently. China wants to create another 10 million jobs for unemployed and hold the unemployment rate at below 4.5% this year. It is predicted that the umeployment rate will remain stable for the fourth quarter of the year and for the whole of next year (2016).

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In China's GDP, In has increased up to 6.9% as compared to a predicted 6.8%, even though China's economy grew at its slowest pace since the global financial crisis in the third quarter. Increasing up to 6.9% during the July-September quarter, it has slowed from a 7 percent increase in the previous quarter. However, the numbers were still better than market expectations. From a following article's extract, Bureau spokesman Sheng Laiyun told Reuters that China faced increased downward pressure on exports, and the government needed time to absorb excess capacity in traditional industries. China's Ultimate goal is to hit a 7% increase, but based on the global economic recovery losing steam, China's government admitted hitting such a target was not easy

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GDP

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China's economy grew at its slowest pace since the global financial crisis in the third quarter, reviving expectations of further stimulus to avert a stalling of the world's growth engine.

The world's second largest economy expanded by 6.9 percent in the July-September quarter, slowing from a 7 percent increase in the previous quarter. The numbers were still better than market expectations.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast gross domestic product (GDP) in the world's second-largest economy would grow 6.8 percent in July-September period from a year earlier.

"As growth slows and risk of deflation heightens, we reiterate that China needs to cut reserve requirement ratio (RRR) by another 50bps in Q4," ANZ economists Li-gang Liu and Louis Lam, said in a note. A basis point is 1/100th of a percentage point.

"Looming deflation risk suggests that the People's Bank of China will also adjust the benchmark interest rates, especially lending rate, down further."

Growth was up 1.8 percent quarter-on-quarter in Q3, China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Monday. This compared to a Reuters forecast of 1.7 percent, down from a revised 1.8 percent in the second quarter.

Bureau spokesman Sheng Laiyun told Reuters that China faced increased downward pressure on exports, and the government needed time to absorb excess capacity in traditional industries.

The survey-based unemployment rate in China was around 5.2 percent in September, Sheng added.

The government has set its annual economic growth target at "around 7 percent" for 2015, but at the weekend Chinese Premier Li Keqiang admitted that with the global economic recovery losing steam, hitting such a target was "not easy."

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China's growth eases to slowest pace since GFC

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China's economy grew at its slowest pace since the global financial crisis in the third quarter, reviving expectations of further stimulus to avert a stalling of the world's growth engine. The world's second largest economy expanded by 6.9 percent in the July-September quarter, slowing from a 7 percent increase in the previous quarter.

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China's Scarcity

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THREE years ago the residents of Hualiba village in central China's Henan province were moved 10km (six miles) from their homes into squat, yellow houses far from any source of work or their newly allocated fields. These days only the very young and very old live there. Close to their old farms, a giant concrete canal now cuts a swathe. From October 31st the channel will gush with water flowing from China's lush south to the parched north.

The new waterway is part of the biggest water-diversion scheme in the world: the second arm of what is known as the South-North Water Diversion Project. This is designed to solve an age-old imbalance. The north of China has only a fifth of the country's naturally available fresh water but two-thirds of the farmland. The problem has grown in recent decades because of rapid urban growth and heavy pollution of scarce water supplies.
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The result is a chronic shortage. The World Bank defines water scarcity as less than 1,000 cubic metres (35,300 cubic feet) of fresh water per person per year. Eleven of China's 31 provinces are dryer than this. Each Beijing resident has only 145 cubic metres a year of available fresh water. In 2009 the government said that nearly half the water in seven main rivers in China was unfit for human consumption. All this has encouraged ever greater use of groundwater. Much of this is now polluted too.

In 1952 Mao Zedong suggested the north could "borrow" water from the south. After his death China's economic boom boosted demand for such a scheme and provided the cash to enable it. In 2002 the diversion project got under way. An initial phase was completed last year. This involved deepening and broadening the existing Grand Canal, which was built some 1,400 years ago, to take 14.8 billion cubic metres of water a year more than 1,100km northward from the Yangzi river basin towards the port city of Tianjin.

In late October the second, far more ambitious and costly route is due to open. This new watercourse, over a decade in the making, will push 13 billion cubic metres of water more than 1,200km from the Danjiangkou dam in the central province of Hubei to the capital, Beijing. The aim is to allow industry and agriculture to keep functioning; already in 2008 Beijing started pumping in emergency supplies from its neighbouring province, Hebei. The new canal will help avert an imminent crisis. But the gap between water supply and demand will remain large and keep growing.

The transfer will supply about a third of Beijing's annual demand. A spur of the canal will provide an even greater proportion of Tianjin's. But these shares will shrink over time. Even if people use less water, population growth, the expansion of cities and industrialisation will increase China's overall demand. By lubricating further water-intensive growth the current project may even end up exacerbating water stress in the north.

Shifting billions of cubic metres across the country has caused huge disruption. The government says it has moved 330,000 people to make way for the central route. Laixiang Sun of the University of Maryland in America reckons the number uprooted is at least half a million. There will also be health and environmental costs. Diverting river-water northward could promote the spread of diseases common in the south, particularly schistosomiasis, a debilitating snail-borne disease. Reduced flow in the Yangzi may make coastal water supplies vulnerable to intrusion by seawater and increase the potential for drought.

The financial cost is also high. Mr Sun puts the cost of the project at more than $62 billion-far higher than the original $15 billion price tag. His estimate does not include the running of the project or the building of 13 new water-treatment plants to clean the water.

By increasing supply, the government is failing to confront the real source of the problem: high demand for water and inefficient use of it. Chinese industry uses ten times more water per unit of production than the average in industrialised countries, according to a report by the World Bank in 2009. A big reason for this is that water in China is far too cheap. In May 2014 Beijing introduced a new system that makes tap water more expensive the more people use. But prices are still far from market levels. Officials turn a blind eye to widespread extraction of un-tariffed groundwater by city dwellers and farmers, despite plummeting groundwater levels.

Raising the price would cut demand and encourage more efficient use. It should also help lure industry away from water-scarce areas where prices would be set at higher rates. Arid areas that are forced by the government to pipe water into desiccated cities like Beijing could offset their losses by charging higher tariffs.

Yet such solutions make officials nervous. They do not want to scare industries away from cities by charging them more for water. They also do not want to face angry protests by residents. Hence they prefer shifting water around in pipes and canals. Britt Crow-Miller of Portland State University describes the diversion project as "a physical demonstration of political power". In Henan giant billboards make this clear: they call on locals to support the project "to bring the capital clean water and blue skies". No reciprocal signs ask Beijingers to thank their southern comrades.

In the absence of any grand plan to cut demand, the government will need to keep the water flowing north. This makes it more likely that a third part of the diversion project might one day go ahead. This would deploy tricky engineering at great altitude to transfer water from the headwaters of the Yangzi to the upper reaches of the Yellow river across the Tibetan plateau. Such a massive project would still not solve the problem. But it might keep water flowing for a few years more-and in China politics is thicker than water.

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THREE years ago the residents of Hualiba village in central China's Henan province were moved 10km (six miles) from their homes into squat, yellow houses far from any source of work or their newly allocated fields. These days only the very young and very old live there.

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China's Scarcity

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The Diplomat has previously covered China's water pollution crisis, with the Chinese government reporting that nearly 60 percent of China's groundwater is polluted. But water scarcity, while obviously exacerbated by pollution, is also a severe problem for China, one that is tied up with complex questions about energy use, urbanization, and modernization.

Water issues were highlighted recently by Premier Li Keqiang. He urged local governments to accelerate their work on dealing with water issues, from water conservation to water diversion projects. In a visit to China's Ministry of Water Resources, Li suggested providing more government funding for these projects and better support in the form of favorable policies. Trying to sweeten the deal, Li said such projects would also help "stabilize economic growth" by raising employment and investment levels.

Li's personal attention to the matter emphasizes the urgency of addressing water issues in China, According to the World Bank, China has renewable internal freshwater resources of 2,071 cubic meters per capita, well above the UN definition of water scarcity as 1,000 cubic meters per person. But China's water resources are not distributed equally. According to Choke Point: China, nearly 70 percent of water used in China goes to the agriculture sector, while 20 percent is used in the coal industry. Both of these industries - agriculture and coal - are concentrated in China's north, which also happens to be an area of scarce rainfall, receiving only 20 percent of China's total moisture. As a result, demand for water is outstripping supply. In northern China, the average water per capita is only around 200 cubic meters. In Beijing, consumption levels were 70 percent greater than the total water supply in 2012.

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As Li's remarks indicated, the Chinese government is very aware of the problem and is taking concrete steps to solve it, both by increasing efficiency and decreasing water use. Still, Beijing is struggling to adapt to the central problem. Thanks to urbanization and modernization, China's water consumption is growing (projected to reach 670 billion cubic meters a year in the early 2020s, according to Choke Point: China) even while its water resources are dwindling - down 13 percent since 2000.

To solve the problem, since 2002 China has been working on a mega-project to bring water from the moisture-rich south to the arid north. The South-North Water Diversion Project will use three canals to move 44.8 billion cubic meters of water each year from the south to the north, according to The Atlantic. All told, the project is expected to cost over $60 billion; the Eastern and Central Canals are already functioning. But simply supplying more water won't solve the underlying problem of inefficient water use and growing demand. In fact, the newly completed Central Canal won't even make up the entire shortfall in Beijing's water supply - and demand will only continue to increase.

There are potential solutions, but these have faced political opposition. The Economist argued that China could best address its problems by simply raising the price of water, particularly in regions where water is scarce. Officials have been reluctant to do this, however, for fear of driving away industries that support local economies. Without a strict policy on water conservation at the central level, local officials are unlikely to take action. As a result, China's war on pollution, particularly air pollution, may prove to be simple in comparison to the potential water crisis currently brewing.

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The Diplomat has previously covered China's water pollution crisis, with the Chinese government reporting that nearly 60 percent of China's groundwater is polluted. But water scarcity, while obviously exacerbated by pollution, is also a severe problem for China, one that is tied up with complex questions about energy use, urbanization, and modernization.

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China's Scarcity

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Photograph by Imaginechina via AP Images

China's sheer vastness is arguably both its greatest strength and greatest weakness. China can harness the manpower and brainpower of 1.3 billion people, but it also has 1.3 billion people to feed, provide education and health care for, and supply energy to. In celebrating or bemoaning China's rise, analysts can play up either side of the coin. Damien Ma, a fellow at the Paulson Institute in Chicago, and William Adams, a senior international economist for PNC Financial Services Group, have written a new book exploring the concept of scarcity in its many facets-from natural resources to implied political limits-and examining potential impacts on China's future and the world's. The authors of In Line Behind a Billion People recently shared their thoughts with Businessweek.

Natural resources are the most concrete example of how scarcity limits China, so let's start there. What do you see as China's most serious environmental constraints?

Damien Ma: No matter which way you slice it, China just has a low natural resources-to-population ratio to begin with. You could say that China's "default setting" is resource scarcity-about the only thing it has in abundance is coal, which is also why it uses so much of it. But the reason this is going to be an ever-larger problem is [that] China's current growth model has severely exacerbated resource scarcities, from water to land to energy. And we suspect the full ramifications of that growth model on limited resources are going to be more evident in the coming decade as the country reckons with the environmental and resource cost of that growth. Not to mention how the intensification of climate change effects could put further pressure on this kind of scarcity.

If I must pick one, I'd say water scarcity is going to be the gravest challenge. China has only about one-third of the world's average in per-capita fresh water availability. In contrast, the U.S.'s Lake Michigan alone contains something like 4 percent of the world's fresh water. Little wonder that many Chinese look with envy at the U.S. and see endless fecund land and abundant natural resources, with only about a quarter of China's population competing for those resources. Looking a bit into the future, there are going to be significant competing demands for water in China, not just from industrialization and agriculture, but also from urban consumers as China continues to urbanize.

One of the key hurdles to China's urbanization plans-and desire to stimulate a consumer economy-is the longstanding hukou system of residency permits, which limits the ability of new urban migrants to obtain access to local health care, education, and other services. Usually this is discussed as a social justice issue, but in your book you look at the hukou system through the lens of scarcity. Can you explain this a bit? And what do you think might be a smart, or likely, way forward?

William Adams: From a realpolitik perspective, you can argue that the government historically used the household registration system, or hukou, to maintain the support of the urban middle class, which was basically happy to have the authorities keep rural Chinese from flooding into urban schools and hospitals or overwhelming pension funds. The urban bias in public spending is an important reason why China's urban middle class still supports the government, despite Internet censorship, corruption, and other complaints.

But the need to move rural Chinese into cities and allow them to participate in urbanization and a domestically oriented economy means that the household registration system is increasingly incompatible with the country's growth strategy. The system won't change overnight, but the government is likely to equalize access incrementally to health care, education, and pensions for urban and rural households to make the urbanization process possible and less destabilizing.

This change has important implications for the future makeup of China's economy: Health services and retirement care, for example, are likely to grow even faster than the rapid growth of the Chinese retiree population implies over the next decade. It's reminiscent of Chinese growth themes from 10 years ago-strong secular growth and rising penetration of an addressable market translating into a sector growing much faster than the overall economy.

Your book also discusses high-quality education as a scarce resource in China. One of the most significant and painful milestones in every Chinese young person's life is preparing for and taking the dreaded gaokao college entrance exam. For most universities in China, admission is wholly based on gaokao scores (and sometimes bribes), making the pressure for students to perform well on the test enormous. Can you talk about how this shapes secondary education in China?

Ma: We certainly don't envy Chinese high-school students. The social pressures are so high precisely because everyone knows how limited the choice slots are for top schools. There was a particular anecdote in our book about how a family decided not to tell their son that his mother had passed away until he had finished the gaokao. That basically captured how intense and soul-crushing this competition for educational attainment can become in today's China.

This kind of "public goods" scarcity has several implications, in our view. One, it will probably make it harder for Chinese urbanites to relinquish their privileges of urban resident status that gives them a leg up in getting into the good schools. It may also exacerbate social cleavages between urbanites and migrant residents who are now living in cities almost permanently. Two, competition is so fierce over a limited resource at home that more young Chinese, especially those families with means, are going to "opt out" of their education system and get a degree abroad. We are already seeing that happening in the U.S. But if the domestic system does not change, many more Chinese students will want to try their chances in Western countries where there isn't a gaokao (the Chinese think the SATs are pretty easy by comparison) and where education quality is perceived to be much higher.

Also on the topic of education: Every year when the Times Higher Education releases its World University Rankings-and other institutions release their own lists-it's reliably a headline in state-run newspapers if any Chinese universities crack the top 50. In fact, a disproportionate amount of government funds are channeled toward the ambition of making China's very top universities-especially Peking University and Tsinghua-world-class, while support lags far behind for other universities. Do you think China is making the right choice in concentrating resources, or does this only compound problems of privilege and inequality?

Adams The ultimate driver of economic growth in China a generation from now will be the quality of skills held by the average Chinese worker. So as a macroeconomist, I am mostly interested in the quality of the typical Chinese education, not what the tiny minority of elite students are up to. But if the goal is increasing the quality of the average education, do you achieve that by spending resources broadly or by creating centers of excellence?

I'm not convinced there is a definitive answer to that question. In any case, the fact that China's government and, even more so, the average Chinese household throws so much of [their] resources at educating the next generation is a strong signal that the country is developing the human capital needed to escape the middle-income trap. It's one more reason why China can be expected to be one of the world's most dynamic markets even after industrialization and urbanization slow down.

The last section of your book discusses how scarcity affects Chinese politics. Can you explain what you mean by "political scarcity"? Do you thinks China's current leaders are adequately aware of the implications and able to manage the risks-and for how long?

Ma: What we really mean is a scarcity of the kind of institutions that increasingly middle-class Chinese people demand. Put another way, this is a supply-side governance challenge. The Chinese government must now deal with a much more pluralistic society and middle class, which may no longer be entirely convinced of the old growth-for-stability bargain that's been the status quo in authoritarian China for the past several decades.

There is an entire generational cohort of Chinese who are in their 40s and 30s, and younger, that have little idea of what the previous era of material scarcity was like. They instead have more modern and demanding expectations of how the government should function. This stark generational discontinuity will be an enormous challenge for the Chinese state to reconcile. How China navigates these issues will shape what kind of country it may become, politically and socially. To us, this seems like a much more important issue going forward than whether the economy is growing at 7 percent or 7.5 percent next year.

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China's sheer vastness is arguably both its greatest strength and greatest weakness. China can harness the manpower and brainpower of 1.3 billion people, but it also has 1.3 billion people to feed, provide education and health care for, and supply energy to. In celebrating or bemoaning China's rise, analysts can play up either side of the coin.

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China's Inflation

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China's consumer inflation waned further last month brought down by lower food prices, adding, economists said, to signs of slack demand and continued slowing in the world's second-largest economy.

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China's Inflation

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China's consumer inflation moderated more than expected in October, while producer prices extended their decline to the 44th straight month, flagging persistent deflationary pressure in the world's second largest economy.

The October consumer price index (CPI) rose 1.3 percent from a year earlier, compared with 1.6 percent in September, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data showed on Tuesday. The reading came in below expectations of a 1.5 percent rise, according to a Reuters poll of economists.

The producer price index (PPI) fell 5.9 percent in October from a year earlier, equal to the 5.9 percent decline in September and slightly worse than economists' forecasts of a 5.8 percent drop.

The weak inflation print continues an already well-established trend of falling producer prices and tepid consumer price rises, in part a result of sharply lower commodity prices in 2015 but also reflecting slowing demand growth for many goods..

Heavy industrial firms and miners, hit by an extended slump in the real estate sector which drives final demand for many of their products, have fared particularly poorly.

Read More China's trade drops well below expectations in October

The Luan Group, a state coal miner, said last month it had no choice but to cut output and put workers on extended unpaid leave.

China is already in its biggest easing cycle since the height of the financial crisis, but low inflation means that real interest rates remain high for many firms, especially manufacturers many of whom have already endured several years of falling factory gate prices.

The central bank has cut benchmark interest six times since November last year and repeatedly reduced banks' reserve requirement ratio.

More stimulus is needed to secure Beijing's growth target of no less than 6.5 percent in the next five years, and pave the way for a the transition to more a consumption-led growth model, analysts say.

Trade figures disappointed analyst expectations by a wide margin in October with exports falling 6.9 percent and imports slipping 18.8 percent. Activities in China's factory sector fell for the eight months in October, private and official survey showed, though the reading pointed to a slower pace of contraction.

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China's consumer inflation moderated more than expected in October, while producer prices extended their decline to the 44th straight month, flagging persistent deflationary pressure in the world's second largest economy. The October consumer price index (CPI) rose 1.3 percent from a year earlier, compared with 1.6 percent in September, National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data showed on Tuesday.

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China Inflation (statistics)

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Get ahead of inflation trends in China with comprehensive forecasts, data, and reports from leading economists. Access updated forecasts here.

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Unemployment (statistics)

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Unemployment

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DESPITE all the ups and downs in China's economy over the past decade, its official unemployment rate has remained incredibly stable. Incredible in the sense of "impossible to believe". The registered urban jobless rate is just 4.1% now. This would seem to point to economic vigour, but the problem is that it has sat at that precise level, without moving, since late 2010. And it has stayed within an absurdly narrow range of 4.0-4.3% since 2002, even at the depths of the global financial crisis (see chart below).

New research claims that the real unemployment rate might be more than twice as high. In a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Feng Shuaizhang of the Shangai University of Finance and Economics and Hu Yingyao and Robert Moffitt of Johns Hopkins University parse data from an official housing survey to construct an alternative index. They find that China's unemployment rate averaged 10.9% from 2002-2009, nearly seven percentage points higher than the registered jobless rate over that period.
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The survey does not cover more recent data, so their research does not show whether the labor market has deteriorated as the Chinese economy has slowed. But their figures do point to the large, lasting impact of the mass closures of bankrupt state-owned companies in the 1990s. The unemployment rate was just 3.9% from 1988-95 and then climbed steadily upwards. State firms had played the biggest role in China's north-east and so their closures dealt the region a particularly heavy blow, with its unemployment rate averaging 12.5% from 2002-9.

Just how worrying are these findings? The data comes from the urban household survey, which is conducted by the National Bureau of Statistics and covers all cities and towns, so it ought to be both representative and authoritative. And their unemployment index is more volatile than the registered jobless rate, making for a closer fit to the ebb and flow of economic cycles in China.

But if the official rock-steady 4.1% jobless rate is trusted by no one, the conclusion that China suffers from chronic unemployment of more than 10% is also worthy of a large dose of scepticism. As the authors readily admit, there is a major gap in their data. The survey only covers people who hold local hukou, or residency permits, and therefore excludes the tens of millions of migrants who stream to cities for work every year. In Shanghai, for example, some 14m residents hold local hukou, but another 10m people live and work in the city on a permanent basis. The latter are outside the remit of the urban household survey.

There is also good reason to think that the 10.9% unemployment rate exaggerates the problem, potentially by a wide margin. This figure covers a period in which China's growth rate average more than 10% a year and annual wage growth in urban areas was 15%. It would be highly unusual, to say the least, to register such strong wage growth at a time of persistently high unemployment.

A skills mismatch between job seekers and job openings might account for some of the discrepancy, but not to the extent of more than one in ten people, especially younger workers, being unable to find jobs. A more likely explanation is that the household survey is itself problematic. The survey does not ask whether people are actively searching for jobs, so researchers have to glean from the way they describe their status (for example, "waiting to be employed") that they are still actively in the job market. What's more, respondents to surveys in China are notoriously reticent about working in grey parts of the economy, whether to avoid trouble or to evade taxes. Another survey found that the amount of income earned but not officially reported by households equals more than a tenth of GDP.
Bring in the boffins
This is not to say that the 4.1% registered unemployment rate is any better as a gauge of the labour market. It is, indeed, more flawed. Not only is it also restricted to urban hukou holders, it only covers those who actually file for unemployment benefits, which few do since they are so meagre.

Those tracking the Chinese economy thus have to look elsewhere to take the pulse of the labour market. One alternative is a survey of urban employment centres published by the ministry of human resources and social security. This shows that for every job seeker, there were 1.06 job openings in the second quarter this year, implying that the labour market is actually very tight, though a bit slacker than at the end of last year (when there were 1.15 job openings for every job seeker). But this figure is only partial: not all companies or job seekers go through employment centres.

Another alternative is a surveyed unemployment rate that in its methodology more closely resembles the unemployment rates reported by developed economies. According to this, China's jobless rate is now 5.1%. This is more promising as a gauge of unemployment, but its coverage is limited (just 31 major cities for now) and the government only started publishing it regularly at the end of 2013.

If a wider survey confirms this relatively sanguine data, there is yet another complication. A recent working paper by Raphael Lam, Xiaoguang Liu and Alfred Schipke of the International Monetary Fund notes that the structure of the Chinese economy might lead to artificial stability in the labour market. State-owned companies tend to hold on to workers during downturns rather than laying them off, because the political objective of maintaining social stability trumps the corporate goal of maximising profits. And the countryside is still a safety valve for migrants to cities who lose their jobs in downturns. In 2008, when the financial crisis erupted, state media estimated that as many as 45m people returned to their rural homes, alleviating pressure on urban employment.

All this data confusion would be quite trivial were the unemployment rate not such a crucial economic indicator. With Chinese growth slowing, and the government trying to work out how much to stimulate it and where to target its support, the lack of clarity about the labour market is becoming a bigger problem. As David Keohane writing for FT Alphaville suggests, this at least points to a certain class of jobs that needs creating. Time to hire an army of boffins to count the true number of China's unemployed.

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DESPITE all the ups and downs in China's economy over the past decade, its official unemployment rate has remained incredibly stable. Incredible in the sense of "impossible to believe". The registered urban jobless rate is just 4.1% now.

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GDP (statistics)

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Trading Economics members can view, download and compare data from nearly 200 countries, including more than 20 million economic indicators, exchange rates, government bond yields, stock indexes and commodity prices.

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China GDP | 1960-2018 | Data | Chart | Calendar | Forecast | News

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The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in China was worth 11199.15 billion US dollars in 2016. The GDP value of China represents 18.06 percent of the world economy. GDP in China averaged 1790.50 USD Billion from 1960 until 2016, reaching an all time high of 11199.15 USD Billion in 2016 and a record low of 47.21 USD Billion in 1962.

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China's Inflation

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Consumer price inflation in China eased by more than expected in September, official figures have revealed.

China's consumer price index (CPI) rose 1.6% in September compared with a year earlier, China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said.

That was lower than analysts' forecasts of 1.8%, and down from the rate of 2% recorded in August.

Producer prices fell for a 43rd straight month as manufacturers cut prices to win business.

The latest inflation figures added to fears of a rapid slowdown in the world's second largest economy.

Asian markets were all lower in response to the inflation figures, which came a day after data that showed imports fell for an 11th straight month in September.

More rate cuts?

China's producer price index (PPI) fell 5.9% in September from a year earlier, matching the rate of decline in August, which marked the biggest fall since the financial crisis.

Non-food consumer inflation was even lower with an annual growth rate of just 1% in September, the NBS data showed.

The easing CPI was mainly due to a high comparison base last year, Yu Qiumei, a senior NBS statistician, said.

CPI rose 0.5% month-on-month in September 2014, compared to a 0.1% growth last month.

Reflecting growing strains on Chinese companies from persistently weak demand and overcapacity, manufacturers continued to cut selling prices to win business.

Economists at Nomura said the lacklustre growth outlook led them to expect moderate fiscal stimulus from the central government and continued monetary easing.

Nomura said it expected another cut to the Chinese central banks' reserve requirement ratio (RRR) late this year and another four in 2016, each by 50 basis points, together with two more interest rate cuts of 25 basis points each next year.

China has already launched a wave of economic stimulus measures since late 2014, including cutting benchmark interest rates five times since November, But some analysts believe the moves have been less effective than when the economy was more tightly controlled, exports were strong and debt levels were much lower.

Growth data

Weak producer prices are also threatening to erode the profits of Chinese firms and add to their debts, something analysts expect to continue for the remainder of the year.

The inflation figures come as trade data on Tuesday showed imports tumbled for the 11th month in a row in September, as result of weaker global commodity prices and lower demand,. Exports also fell for a third month, although by less than expected.

Other surveys showed activity in China's factory sector shrank in September on fewer new orders, sparking fears the Chinese economy may be slowing down more rapidly than expected.

China will release gross domestic product (GDP) data for the third quarter on Monday. Many economists expect the three months to September to show economic growth fell below the government's target of 7% for the first time since the financial crisis.

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Consumer price inflation in China eased by more than expected in September, official figures have revealed. China's consumer price index (CPI) rose 1.6% in September compared with a year earlier, China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. That was lower than analysts' forecasts of 1.8%, and down from the rate of 2% recorded in August.

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China's Inflation (statistics)

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In May, the politically sensitive food prices increased by 0.1 percent, way slower than a 0.7 percent rise in April and marking the softest gain in food prices since a decline in January. Prices declined sharply for fresh fruit (-2.7 percent from +4.2 percent in April) and fell further for pork (-16.7 percent from -16.1 percent) while rose more for eggs (20.8 percent from 14.9 percent).

Meantime, non-food inflation edged up to 2.2 percent from 2.1 percent in April. Upward pressure came from: transport and communication (1.8 percent from 1.1 percent); other goods and services (1 percent from 0.9 percent); clothing (1.1 percent, the same as in April); rent, fuel & utilities (2.2 percent, the same as in April); household goods and services (1.5 percent, the same as in April); healthcare (5.1 percent from 5.2 percent); and education, culture and recreation (1.9 percent from 2 percent).

For 2018, China set its consumer inflation target at around 3 percent, in line with the preceding year's figure.

On a monthly basis, consumer prices fell by 0.2 percent, similar to the April's figure while markets expected a 0.1 percent decline.

Meanwhile, the producer price index increased by 4.1 percent from a year earlier in May, after a 3.4 percent rise in the previous month and above market expectations of 3.9 percent. It is the highest producer inflation since January. Prices of means of production went up at a faster pace (5.4 percent from 4.5 percent), namely extraction (8.1 percent from 6.1 percent), raw materials (7.4 percent from 5.7 percent) and processing (4.4 percent from 3.9 percent). Also, cost of consumer goods rose more (0.3 percent from 0.1 percent), namely food production (0.3 percent from 0.1 percent), clothing (0.3 percent from 0.2 percent); daily use goods (1.1 percent from 0.9 percent); while prices of consumer durable goods declined further (-0.7 percent from -0.6 percent). On a monthly basis, producer prices went up by 0.4 percent.

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China Inflation Rate | 1986-2018 | Data | Chart | Calendar | Forecast

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China's consumer prices rose by 1.8 percent year-on-year in May of 2018, the same as in a month earlier and matching market consensus. It remained the lowest inflation rate since January. On a monthly basis, consumer prices fell by 0.2 percent, similar to the April's figure while markets expected a 0.1 percent decline.

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1. GDP

Slowing economic Growth

"What he means is that China's economic deceleration -- the official growth rate of 6.9 percent is a six-year low -- is the sign of an economy in transition"

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1. Unemployment

"The government wants to create at least 10 million new jobs and hold the unemployment rate below   4.5 percent this year"

- aiming to reduce the unemployment rate.

2. China has a generally balanced job market - not facing a lot of unemployed

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GDP

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FocusEconomics | Economic Forecasts from the World's Leading Economists

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China Economy - GDP, Inflation, CPI and Interest Rate

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BEIJING - The registered-unemployment rate in China's cities stood at 4.05 percent at the end of September, slightly up from 4.04 percent in June, official data showed Tuesday.

China created 10.66 million new jobs for urban residents in the first nine months, Li Zhong, spokesperson for the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, told a press conference.

The government wants to create at least 10 million new jobs and hold the unemployment rate below 4.5 percent this year.

"China's job market was generally stable in the first three quarters," he said.

There were 109 positions for every 100 job hunters in the third quarter, indicating a generally-balanced job market, Li said, citing a survey conducted by the ministry across 100 cities.

With the economy feeling the weight of downward pressure, there had been a decline in job vacancies. In the first nine months, positions at 30,000 monitored companies dropped by nearly 5 percent.

Li assured that this was a small loss and mainly affected sectors struggling with with overcapacity or environmental problems, including the coal, steel and chemical sectors.

He forecast the job market will remain steady in the fourth quarter and next year, as government measures bear fruit, including numerous cuts to bank's reserve requirement ratio and interest rates.

The country's economy expanded 6.9 percent in the third quarter, the slowest pace in six years. The government wants to keep economic growth at around 7 percent for 2015.

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BEIJING - The registered-unemployment rate in China's cities stood at 4.05 percent at the end of September, slightly up from 4.04 percent in June, official data showed Tuesday. China created 10.66 million new jobs for urban residents in the first nine months, Li Zhong, spokesperson for the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, told a press conference.

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China's Slower Growth Could Be a Good Sign

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It's shifting from an export-led economy to one that's more consumer-dependent -- and sustainable.