mismatch between China’s electricity consumption and a key measure of industrial output.

The focus these days is on the mismatch between China’s electricity consumption and a key measure of industrial output.

For most of the past decade, China’s industrial value-added growth (IVA) –industry output less input costs – has moved broadly in step with movements in electricity consumption. But the relationship’s broken down recently: electricity use is still seeing negative growth, while IVA is growing at a decent positive rate again.

Some China analysts are crying foul: If IVA growth figures are being cooked, surely that means China’s recent GDP data have been overstated too. China’s statisticians use IVA output to estimate what accounts for nearly half of China’s GDP.

China’s association of electricity generators has a solution: it’s stopped publishing consumption data.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124350326977562001.html

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/what-you-dont-know/