China Says India's Econ Data Is Manipulated

From China Real Time:

(This has been cross-posted from WSJ’s India Real Time blog.)
“Manipulated economic data.” “Creative” use of statistical methods. “Paper growth.” Which large developing country is being described here?

India’s latest output figures have provoked head-scratching from many quarters for showing the country leapfrogging China as the world’s fastest-growing economy despite widespread signs that demand is shaky and companies aren’t making big investments.

Now, an op-ed in the Global Times, a Chinese state-backed newspaper, describes it as a “myth” that India’s economy has caught up with China’s, and argues that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is risking his country’s future by working to attract investment.

“India’s laboring people are still struggling on the edge of poverty where survival, rather than quality of life, is the main concern,” write Dai Yonghong and Wang Jianping, scholars at Sichuan University in southwestern China. “Modi is too persistent in pushing the image of a bustling and prosperous economy while [he] remains blinded to the root of India’s ills.”

Last year, Messrs. Dai and Wang write, India changed its methods for estimating growth “to moisten the data to make the government seem more credible.”...MORE