Comparative statistics are a staple of analyses of the “race” with China, but there are many reasons to be careful when reading them. Many comparisons of the US and China that are derived from Chinese statistics are open to question.
First, China is engaged in a long-running influence campaign to persuade the world of its success. China’s surprisingly successful campaign (a tribute to persistence) means that China will tilt any statistics in its favor. This alone suggests a degree of caution is necessary. Chinese data lives in an environment that seeks to shape statistics to support this overarching narrative of China’s success — or to suppress data that would suggest otherwise.
China’s government regards more data as “state secrets” than other countries do. Statistics, particularly economic statistics, are often massaged or hidden. In several cases, China has even arrested journalists and researchers for revealing data that other countries would regard as public.
China’s national economic statistics cannot be taken at face value. There is a constant desire to inflate metrics like GDP and to disguise metrics, such as debt levels, that contradict the story that success is inevitable. Published data may show that the US has more public debt than China, but this is the result of Chinese obfuscation.
As part of this shaping effort, there are incentives for Chinese institutions and researchers to game the system. For example, the number of patents or PhDs, which were used to measure innovation capabilities, has been inflated. The number of patents is particularly suspect, as companies and researchers will file patents even if they are of no commercial value. In China, you are rewarded for the number of patents you submit, not how much the patent earns.
“Gaming the system” of rules and norms created for the global economy applies to more than data and is a major issue for stable relations with China.
Similarly, using the number of citations or scientific publications as an indicator of strength needs to be scrutinized carefully. Most citations are internal to China. Numbers of citations are used to identify influential articles, but there is some evidence that Chinese researchers will reference each other in order to drive up the “most-cited publication” measure. This alone makes it questionable.
There is also the question of what the metric asserts it is measuring versus what it is actually measuring. For example, China asserted that its radar could detect stealth aircraft and that the J-20 was a fighter equivalent to the F-35. Recent events in Venezuela and Iran — or the disappearance of the J-20’s designer — suggest this may have been an exaggeration. It’s a mistake to take metrics in sensitive areas like military and economic strength or tech innovation at face value.
This complicates the research task. There are examples where externally verifiable metrics may provide a more accurate picture, such as electricity consumption, which suggests the level of economic activity. Even the movement of construction cranes or levels of traffic can provide more accurate measures of economic activity. Once these are identified, however, there is a risk that China will game them. GDP remains among the best: if China is doing so well, why is its national income growth slowing?
Other metrics are misleading. Measures of scale versus performance will usually favor China. China has more people, so some measures will always show more — more cell phones, more cars, more shoes. Scale can be impressive, but it’s not always an indicator of success.
China has more high-speed trains, but the US has more passenger airplanes. If the goal is moving people quickly over long distances, who is ahead?
5G remains a contentious area for measurement. Some assert that China is ahead — China has done quite well in 5G, but when you look at access to 5G services, the US leads. China leads the world in sheer infrastructure volume, but trails in network speeds and network efficiency, and Chinese companies struggle to turn the massive 5G-installed base into profits. 5G risks becoming a case of picking the metric that tells the story you want, but not which country benefits most.
The classic example of misleading statistics is the story of the late 1950s bomber gap between the USSR and the US, which led analysts and media to fear that the US was falling behind. One story is that the Soviets flew four bombers in formation over the heads of western observers at one of their Mayday parades, then flew them out of sight to circle back and fly overhead again. As a result, Western observers counted each bomber again and again and came up with a wildly inflated figure. We may find that, as was the case in the bomber gap, some of China’s alleged superiority is an illusion created intentionally by the Party to reinforce its legitimacy and grip on power rather than an actual lead. For the tech race with China, there are incentives on both sides (such as a desire for dramatic pronouncements of lost leadership) to inflate the numbers of whatever is being measured.
While it is important not to underestimate China, which is now close to being a peer on many levels, any data from Chinese sources, especially government sources, should be regarded skeptically.
Some easy tricks for reading: Ask what is actually, concretely being measured, and avoid confusing scale with performance. Data from professional, neutral, third parties is better (although even objective institutions like the World Bank can occasionally rely too much on Chinese government data).
It’s a mistake to accept official or published Chinese statistics at face value. There are places where China is ahead, but fewer than a casual reading might suggest.
James Lewis is a Distinguished Fellow at CEPA’s Tech Policy program.
Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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