China data deluge: GDP, steel and power

There was a huge amount of data released on China's economic performance today for 2012.  GDP is the headline grabber and was a little higher than expectations in Q4.  The YoY measure rising 7.9% and quarterly growth at 2%.

There was some revision to seasonal factors on the quarterly data buried in the release, although this doesn't appear to have affected the headline measures too much. This was actually a little weaker in Q4 vs. Q3, suggesting in aggregate growth was actually weaker, contrary to all reports, expectations and even interpretation of the end of 2012 in China.

 I've always found series like fixed asset investment hard to use as growth rates don't seem to deviate much from very high levels, which seems totally at odds with the volatility of markets.  Besides, for things like commodity consumption, we can always look at steel production or power generation to give us a better sense of the industrial economy.

Power production data seemed to have been revised upwards for the whole year in terms of levels, although the growth rates haven't signalled too much of a change.  Total generation was up 7.6%YoY in December, with full year growth at a slow 4.7%.

So the improvement seen through Q4 continued in December, although the pace of improvement wasn't spectacular, especially given the weak comps of 4Q11.  The industrial production mirrored this change.

Crude steel production was reportedly weaker in December at 678mt ann.  That said, as reported in this post, this probably contains under reporting from small mills, which annually disappear off the radar around the end of the year.

There does appear to be some revision to historical in these data too, with full year crude steel production reported at 716.6mt, with the reality probably a little higher than this.

These data confirm industrial activity finished the year with better momentum, although there is an issue with weak comps.  Perhaps the the QoQ GDP data i most accurate, which suggests things were around on par with Q3.

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