Many lessons can be drawn from the National Bureau of Statistics' revision of China's GDP (of 2004) last week, which enlarged the previously reported figure by 16.8 per cent, to mainly represent the more than 2 trillion yuan (US$247 billion) of added value from the service industries.

One quick observation, at least by Saturday night, is that while Beijing may be over the moon about its newly discovered proportion, Shanghai, the largest service city of the Chinese mainland, remains over-modest and its media seem to have no interest in providing additional information about the national revision.

As if intended as a Christmas gift to the residents of the Chinese capital city, Beijing's media, from morning newspapers to evening radio talk shows, were filled with the joyful report that the city's 2004 GDP was revised up more than 40 per cent. On a per capita basis, that would lead to a change from US$3,513 to US$4,970.

"So it turns out we're living in a city of US$5,000 per capita GDP now," my cab driver sighed when we heard the news on the radio while caught in a major jam. "No wonder the traffic is worse than ever."

The Beijing press claimed the city's per capita GDP to be the second highest in the Chinese mainland, only beaten by Shanghai. But how large is Shanghai's figure? Not a single source bothered to reveal this. Maybe the editors think it is purely Shanghai's business.

But Shanghai's business is Beijing's business, because both cities are part of China's business. So when I finally got home, I logged on to the Internet to search for the Shanghai figure. I did it over and over again until midnight and did not find a single source from Shanghai, either in Chinese or in English, to discuss the change in the city's economy.

The local media were talking about the expansion of the airport, completion of some new highways, a shortage of English-speaking kindergarten teachers, and the change of names of some streets. But surprisingly enough, none of them were talking about the change in its economy's accounting.

There are, of course, many loftier goals to pursue in the world than just GDP. Life in Shanghai is certainly much more colourful so is any other city's than can be reflected by a set of dry figures. But so long as an economy is measured by this accounting method, and accurate figures do reflect a lot of significance for analytical persons, all Chinese cities had better help their investors and merchants with timely updates of economic information.

When the Beijing press made the claim that the capital has the second highest per capita GDP in the Chinese mainland, most other cities had not announced their local changes in reaction to the national revision of the GDP.

Beijing's plausible fallacy is a result of what has yet to change in China's statistical system, in which regional figures are always listed in a province by province order.

The features of all cities, except for only a few, remain hopelessly blurred even though some of the cities each have more than 10 million residents and are important in their own ways.

The national statistical yearbooks contain only scanty information about cities such as Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Suzhou, Xiamen, Qingdao and Dalian. Elsewhere, their statistical data are seldom published and updated in such a way as to satisfy managers of the electronic age. But those cities are all increasingly familiar names for overseas business people today.

I remember reading from some Chinese sources saying, in the days when the old accounting method still prevailed, that at least a dozen or so southern cities had long passed Beijing and Shanghai in their per capita GDP, Shenzhen, the city bordering Hong Kong, being on the top of the list.

The central government agency's GDP revision is admittedly a good, responsible move.

But business people also want to know when they will no longer have to rely on sporadic figures for piecing together any given Chinese city's economic picture, instead of each city government's systematic reports and updates.

Email: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 12/26/2005 page4)