One truly global product from national statisticians is the International Comparisons Program (ICP).
The production of the ICP is supervised by the World Bank on behalf of the UN Statistical Commission at the global level, and the regional banks co-ordinate this at the continental level. For example, the African Development Bank (AfDB), co-ordinates this programme for the continent.
The ICP measures gross national product of countries adjusted on the basis of purchasing power parity.
The 2011 ICP result sparked intellectual discordance and we had to undertake several runs to validate the results that were released in 2014.
The report was ultimately adopted at the UN Statistical Commission but with a statement that read “China does not accept the results but you can use them”.
UN General Assembly adopted the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, which govern professional leadership and management of official statistics. There are 10 of these principles and since their adoption in 2014 they became the global law on statistics on which countries should model their national statistics acts.
In 2012 I presented on a panel that discussed violations of the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. In the presentation, there was an effort to unravel the notion that I framed as political statistics and statistical politics.
By political statistics I meant, first, a count and interpretation of political events and observations and second, how these impacted on statistical processes.
By statistical politics I meant events of statistics as occurred across time and their implications on policy and/or politics.
On the fifth of this month the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflections (Mistra) invited Professor Justin Yifu Lin to deliver the Mapungubwe Annual Lecture.
The title of the lecture was ‘China’s New Development Paradigm and Future Development under the Great Changes in the World Unseen in A Century’.
The lecture took me down a memory lane of statistical politics as played out through the International Comparison Program, the results of which China was not to accept.
In early 2014 the board of the ICP had to convene an urgent meeting in Paris to establish facts that led to China’s concerns on the ICP results.
So profound were the concerns, that China was not prepared to accept the results at the end of the four-day technical meeting convened to assess the results and address these concerns.
At the UNSC of March 2014, China continued to raise its concerns. In the end a language was adopted which read “China does not accept the results, but you can use them” and the report was adopted by the UNSC.
This language met two objectives simultaneously: a language that was China-facing said we do not accept the results and one which was facing the world said as the world, you can use them.
Throughout his address eight years later, Prof Lin was quite comfortable as he quoted the results of the ICP wherein China’s GDP on a purchasing power parity basis as a share of the world was 16.4% and marginally higher than that of the US at 16.3%.
In fact, he went further to say that China’s GDP is poised to be twice that of the US and when that occurs it is possible to see an emergence of peaceful coexistence in the world compared to the rather anti-China sentiment in the three successive US administrations.
Why did China cause us the headache at the 2014 summit?
The results seem to have surprised China and it was not ready to embrace a role as a leader of the globe.
However, China had been playing the long game. In January 2013, I was one of 10 outsiders invited to participate in the congress on the economic implications of China on its demography based on the results of 2010 Census of China.
Three resolutions emerged from the congress. First, China relaxed its one-child policy, allowing couples to have two children. This would change the ageing structure of the Chinese population and increase demand.
Second, due to this increased demand, China would grow its economy through domestic consumption and third, China would continue with exports.
By the time the US became hostile to China’s rising star, the Asian tiger had long played its long game.
My trip to China occurred after I delivered the 2011 Census results at the 53rd ANC elective conference in Mangaung where I blended in well in my yellow suit with the gold and green as they sang for the results but failed to plan with them.
Our fundamental problem in South Africa is anchored in failure to respect evidence as preventative and enabling.
China knows the benefits of this medicine. Although not publicly accepted in 2014 at the UNSC, it was silently consumed to direct Chinese policy.
The paradox and mystery of China’s statistical politics.
Dr Pali Lehohla is the director of the Economic Modelling Academy, a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former statistician-general of South Africa
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