Chinese wall is a term used to keep two arms of an organization apart, loosely speaking. It is done to address the conflict of interest within an entity. Therefore for instance in journalism, marketing/advertising group and editorial/ content have a Chinese wall. Most popularly used in finance, it refers to wall between advisory and broking or treasury and investment bank. The rationale is to create a sort of information barrier to prohibit any exchange or seepage of information. This is the meaning but talking of the literal reference, surprisingly, Chinese Wall phrase has no derivation from China whatsoever.
There have been multiple objections or discontentments on the term since it makes clear reference to a nation and ethnicity. What's uncanny is the multiple levels at which it does really fit in the Chinese context. The way China functions as nation with half-verified, full-doubted, unquestioned data and status of the country, I have mainly heard of this phrase used directly in its context only. Such as '"Ya the data is good but with the Chinese wall, who knows what's actually happening!" Hence China finds itself in a situation where it has a popular phrase named after it which has no reference to the nation as such but contextually it fits the description to the T.
So what is really wrong with China in this aspect. How come it is accepted by default that Chinese data may or may not be true and all articles or studies, while analyzing data have a disclaimer of 'if the data is believed to be correct.' The socialist country governed by Communist party is fine but a look at its history reveals subtle hints that led to the face as is perceived today.
There is one facet of data and another of history. China's data is not believed because one, even after several economic cycles where nations traversed the trajectories of recession and restructuring GDP contributors, China's data stayed quite non-volatile till recently. This can be attributed to lack of authenticity or an extremely well functioning economy. Needless to say, world accepts the rest of the world to be inefficient to reduce the average efficiency and improve its ranking.
As for history, one of the world's oldest civilization does not have much vintage when it comes to modern statistical frameworks and parameters. China started to industrialize only in 20th century, and commendably at an unbelievable fast pace. But since the mantra adopted was manufacturing and exports, the de-facto measure of ascertaining economic output became Material Product System, which excludes services. This was a popular method used by socialist economies and still remains so in few CIS countries.
Anyhow, China slowly started calculating GDP and phasing out MPS between mid 1980's till 1993. Hence China's data got accepted by World Bank only after the reforms in 1993. Something happened during this transition of wading and weaning. There were five-year plans and economic growth and sudden emergence of data from nowhere which was at 6% and later revised to 8%. This was drastic and an outlier in the linear growth trajectory... high point of contention was that the numbers projected were mostly same as the numbers required for attaining basic standards of employment and asset building. This was reverse calculation or genius.
The damage that Chinese history did is also the number-cooking during Mao era which was drilled deep with the last nail of 8% GDP target during Asian crisis. Since then, there has been series of reforms and evolved banking standards but the data derived by NBS still does not lie in sync with GDP figures provided by China.
All in all, the non-volatility of data, quickness of compilation, accuracy of back-tracking, old-fashioned methods of statistical calculations have collectively kept the shadow of doubt looming over Chinese economy...and all this without even touching upon the shadow banking which ranges from 10-40% by various estimates.
On the other hand, few details or data, if believed to be true (!) indicates that the above average estimates of GDP growth are still below than actually achieved due to improved service sector which was much larger than estimated and unaccounted for in details in the GDP. As recent development, It has been stated clearly that China is now moving focus away from the shore into the core. The infrastructure density in the interior mainland is addressed. New Identity cards are being issued to provide social-benefits to citizens who migrated inter-state. There is mention of bringing more transparency, which also means acknowledging the lack of it...
The conclusion: Chinese data may be cooked. The world feels that they still are not revealing the real numbers during these times when other countries collectively have started emphasizing equally on growth quality along with growth numbers...
This is the extreme of inference from this superpower. Chinese wall protects what world tries to hustle around. Just saying, Chinese wall, no reference still so apt...and I haven't started on Chinese whisper as yet!
There have been multiple objections or discontentments on the term since it makes clear reference to a nation and ethnicity. What's uncanny is the multiple levels at which it does really fit in the Chinese context. The way China functions as nation with half-verified, full-doubted, unquestioned data and status of the country, I have mainly heard of this phrase used directly in its context only. Such as '"Ya the data is good but with the Chinese wall, who knows what's actually happening!" Hence China finds itself in a situation where it has a popular phrase named after it which has no reference to the nation as such but contextually it fits the description to the T.
So what is really wrong with China in this aspect. How come it is accepted by default that Chinese data may or may not be true and all articles or studies, while analyzing data have a disclaimer of 'if the data is believed to be correct.' The socialist country governed by Communist party is fine but a look at its history reveals subtle hints that led to the face as is perceived today.
There is one facet of data and another of history. China's data is not believed because one, even after several economic cycles where nations traversed the trajectories of recession and restructuring GDP contributors, China's data stayed quite non-volatile till recently. This can be attributed to lack of authenticity or an extremely well functioning economy. Needless to say, world accepts the rest of the world to be inefficient to reduce the average efficiency and improve its ranking.
As for history, one of the world's oldest civilization does not have much vintage when it comes to modern statistical frameworks and parameters. China started to industrialize only in 20th century, and commendably at an unbelievable fast pace. But since the mantra adopted was manufacturing and exports, the de-facto measure of ascertaining economic output became Material Product System, which excludes services. This was a popular method used by socialist economies and still remains so in few CIS countries.
Anyhow, China slowly started calculating GDP and phasing out MPS between mid 1980's till 1993. Hence China's data got accepted by World Bank only after the reforms in 1993. Something happened during this transition of wading and weaning. There were five-year plans and economic growth and sudden emergence of data from nowhere which was at 6% and later revised to 8%. This was drastic and an outlier in the linear growth trajectory... high point of contention was that the numbers projected were mostly same as the numbers required for attaining basic standards of employment and asset building. This was reverse calculation or genius.
The damage that Chinese history did is also the number-cooking during Mao era which was drilled deep with the last nail of 8% GDP target during Asian crisis. Since then, there has been series of reforms and evolved banking standards but the data derived by NBS still does not lie in sync with GDP figures provided by China.
All in all, the non-volatility of data, quickness of compilation, accuracy of back-tracking, old-fashioned methods of statistical calculations have collectively kept the shadow of doubt looming over Chinese economy...and all this without even touching upon the shadow banking which ranges from 10-40% by various estimates.
On the other hand, few details or data, if believed to be true (!) indicates that the above average estimates of GDP growth are still below than actually achieved due to improved service sector which was much larger than estimated and unaccounted for in details in the GDP. As recent development, It has been stated clearly that China is now moving focus away from the shore into the core. The infrastructure density in the interior mainland is addressed. New Identity cards are being issued to provide social-benefits to citizens who migrated inter-state. There is mention of bringing more transparency, which also means acknowledging the lack of it...
The conclusion: Chinese data may be cooked. The world feels that they still are not revealing the real numbers during these times when other countries collectively have started emphasizing equally on growth quality along with growth numbers...
This is the extreme of inference from this superpower. Chinese wall protects what world tries to hustle around. Just saying, Chinese wall, no reference still so apt...and I haven't started on Chinese whisper as yet!
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