Finance & economics | Severed from reality?

China meets its official growth target. Not everyone is convinced

For one thing, 2024 saw the second-weakest rise in nominal GDP since the 1970s

Photograph: Getty Images
|Hong Kong

The company at the heart of “Severance”, a celebrated TV show that just began its second season, features a department of “Macrodata Refinement”. Its workers must spot disconcerting numbers and lock them away in a digital bin. Does China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) have a similar department? If so, it excelled itself this week.

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