Where the definition of absolute proof is what? Clearly something that won't be possible to get. That retail sales in China are supposed to be bigger than the whole consumption part of the economy is proof enough for me. You are obviously free to believe whatever you want.
At this point, proof would probably, for me, be seeing an trusted economic entity describe the huge mistake that you are accusing these firms of making. That not one professional entity has noticed this error but you have, leads me to believe that it's not there.
Their USA data is clearly significantly different, by around 20%. There is no way there was any adjustment of this magnitude. Are you willing to acknowledge that these "elite investment firms" contradicted each other in terms of data used for the American market? And further, that two other elite firms contradicted both of them on American and Chinese numbers?
Are the Mizuho numbers 20% off from the eMarketer numbers or Deloitte/AT Kearney? Since the eMarketer article was posted in August of 2016, only the 2015 numbers should be referenced as "not guesses." The WaPost article citing Mizuho's data didn't say what the numbers were for 2015 and Mizuho's chart was not notched; there were only two time points, which were 2000 and 2018. For you to get numbers for 2015, you would have to measure the x-axis, go 90 degrees up to see where it intersected the lines, then go 90 degrees to the Y axis to measure again where that number is and it's very prone to error. eMarketer put the 2015 numbers at 4.7 for the US, 4.3 for China. By crudely measuring, for the Mizuho data, 2015 numbers look like ~4.5-4.6 for China, ~5.1- 5.2 for the US, which is <7% for the Chinese data, ~10% for the US data, not nearly 20%. If you meant that the discrepency between the Deloitte/AT Kearney numbers and Mizuho numbers is some 20%, then yes, once again, it could be a different, but not necessarily wrong way of measuring retail market size. I cannot certify that there is any contradiction here.
Do we also need a source for Mizuho and eMarketer? The A.T. Kearney report is the most "open" of the ones we're discussing, as we have the full report, with authors, contributors and sources listed.
eMarketer's source is PwC; PwC and Mizuho's, I dunno. I don't think we have the original reports but it's not evidence that they've mixed data up or made up their numbers. The AT Kearney report is nice; I have absolutely no thought of discrediting it. It would have been great if they also had data on Chinese retail in the same report but I'd like to direct your attention to this article which cites AT Kearney:
. This article not only reiterated the prediction that China's retail market would overtake America's by 2018, it said that from AT Kearny's estimates, by 2022, China's should be at $8 trillion while America's at $4 trillion (first and second paragraph). This $4 trillion number is similar to the $3.X trillion number that AT Kearney used in the article that you cited with projected growth. This is further evidence that although this retail sales thing can be measured in different ways, the corresponding US number is not heads and shoulders taller than the Chinese number. In other words, in
some statistic, China's market is about to overtake the US market, though we may lack the economic knowledge to pinpoint the exact definition. This is what I've been thinking all along.
I think it's very likely you're laboring under a misapprehension about how these things work. When one of these reports is produced, it's not the collective work of the whole company, with hundreds or thousands of experts working together. Neither is it reviewed by the board of directors. There is usually a handful of authors (four for the A.T. Kearney report). It's very likely that in the case of the two PwC reports, the authors never met and possibly never read each other's work. One of the reports was focused on Mexico and produced by PwC Mexico. There is no "PwC position" or "PwC knows the difference". It's typically the work of one to five people and reviewed by a few editors before publication. I shouldn't have to explain the standard for something (as in, articles about these reports) to get published in a newspaper. The journalist probably doesn't know or care about the subject in any depth and the editor checks for typos. As long as it'll attract clicks, it gets a write-up.
While I agree that many journalists may not know what's going on and will take whatever the interviewee is saying to them, I do expect discipline and quality from the published works of these firms. When employees use the name of their firm, they now represent the firm and I expect that their reports are reviewed and approved by the board. This is how it works in the company that I work in though it is not a financial firm. We do not have rogue employees writing wrong/embarrassing reports with our company name on it contradicting other reports that our company writes. Financial firms are very disciplined and cut-throat and I don't expect them to tolerate this either.
Similarly, you seem to place a lot of weight on being widely cited. You do know that a lot of things are also widely cited in prestigious publications, including stories of imminent Chinese collapse and fake GDP numbers? Do you take these very seriously as well or could they be wrong? Take Michael Pettis, professor of finance at Peking University, writing in the
. Impeccable credentials, there's no way he doesn't know more than a casual economics reader. Do you accept his conclusions?
The works of Pettis, Gordon Chang, others questioning China's GDP numbers are primarily ideas and interpretations and are of completely different nature to a facts-based economic report. For all these articles AND the ones that state that China's retail market will be the largest in the world, there is a factual portion and an interpretation portion. I assume that those naysayer articles all have to start with some factual statistic and then spin their opinions on it whereas the economic reports are primarily factual numbers followed by a simple, obvious, and logical conclusion. In both cases, the facts that they use have to be reasonably solid though their conclusions are up in the air for discussion. I have no problem with anyone disagreeing that China will become the largest market in 2018 as the conclusion of the article but the data presented leading up to their conclusion is unlikely to be directly wrong. Similarly, people may say that China will collapse, and I may disagree with their conclusion, but I tend to think that the figures they use have to be derived from some reasonably factual base; the disagreement is what those numbers
mean. So I don't accept their conclusion, though I also doubt that their "facts" are made-up if they are highly cited. It is their interpretation that I disagree with.
It's very likely that there will, in fact, be pieces saying that China's sales have overtaken the USA's. I already explained where they likely get the idea/data for this two comments back in point 2. We'll see if there's any skepticism then.
So how long do you think this "mix-up" can continue without someone eventually coming out and knocking that house of cards down by saying they've ALL been mixing up their statistics?
Ultimately, I do agree that retail sales is not a clearly defined category, so there's no international standard for reporting and a lot of confusion. That doesn't mean that different numbers are right at the same time. Like I said before, China isn't helping by having and promoting a uniquely named category that almost definitely measures something different than what its name implies.
Actually, it does mean that. If there is no standard definition, and it can be calculated differently, then different numbers can all be right.
I'm also in the position where I'm repeating myself, so here's my position for the last time.
Household final consumption expenditure (i.e., private spending on goods and services) is a key economic statistic (it's reported by all countries and major international economic organizations), particularly since it's part of a way to report GDP.
In 2016, it's value was 4.4 trillion USD for China and 12.8 trillion USD for the USA. This makes sense because China's GDP is smaller and its economy is based more on investment. In this context, retail sales (which should mean something like private spending on goods) of about 5 trillion USD are plausible for the USA, but not for China. For the USA, they represent about 40% of consumption, which works well with the assumption that the rest is spent on services. For China, that is more than 110% of consumption (which should be impossible by itself), while leaving zero room for services.
If anyone has an explanation, I'm very interested. Otherwise, no amount of reports will convince me of things that go against basic economic facts.
No need to repeat yourself; I understand what you're saying and I don't think that either of us has the solution to this issue by our personal knowledge. The evidences will have to come from official sources.
