I know there has always been some suspicion around Chinese government massaging the statistic data, and quite rightly so from historical experiences. I am not going to defend for them, well I am not able to either I am quite poor in the nuts and bolts of statistics. But I guess there maybe something I can lend for some of the points to the question you just raised.

1. The energy consumption and economic growth is not always closely linked, particularly during disruptive times. In fact even just about ten years ago, this happened in China already. During then Asia economic crisis, China’s economic growth reduced from 10% in 1996 to 7.6% in 1999, while its total energy demand reduced about 77mtce during the same time before recover in 2000. This energy consumption data is according to Chinese NBS, of course may raise suspicion, but the data from IEA also showed China’s primary energy demand up and down in these years, with almost the same level between 1996 and 1999, which is also confirmed by the data from EIA.

2. This case does not only happen in China. During the collapse of USSR, Russian GDP contracted an estimated 40% between 1991 and 1998, but according to IEA its energy demand reduced about a quarter during the same time, same in the EIA’s data. But when Russia’s economy recovers in the last few years, the economic growth is also much quicker than its energy consumption growth. So economy could shrink, as well as grows much quicker, than energy consumption.

3. If neither Russia nor China seems a very reliable case, here is the brilliant “Danish example”, which has always been advocated by the Danish officials in all climate conferences. Since 1980, the Danish economy has grown by 78%, while energy consumption has remained more or less constant, and CO2 emissions have been reduced. You could found it at the Danish Ministry of Climate and Energy.

So I guess the Chinese case does not seem to be as splendid as it appears to you now? Remember the cases above are all statistics over a long period, which would be much more difficult to have dramatic change than in a short term. In the short term a response to a sudden collapse of exporting market would be stop manufacturing and continue with selling the stocks already in the warehouse, a process called inventory control or de-stocking? That is very true for many small exporting industries in China, many of which even shut down during the economic crisis last year. I guess this may explain a bit of the whopping 48% fall in electricity consumption in small scale industries, although still surprisingly high.

Also because it is short term comparison, it could quite easily end up comparing “March’s Apple” with “October’s Pear”. The economic growth data and energy data may have quite different timeframe, for example if the economic data is generated using sales data while energy data is using from production data, these two won’t necessarily match. At last, the industrial structure change means if energy intensive industries are shrinking while less energy intensive industries could make up the loss with much less energy demand, you could end up an increased industrial GDP with reduced energy demand. This is just a possible scenario, but I am not saying that is the exact case China now has.

Having said all that, I didn’t mean that your suspicion was wrong; in fact it is very useful and necessary to question these figures and dig out exactly why things are the way they are. And I hope it would be able to show us that it is not as difficult as we imagined to decouple the economic growth with energy demand. I hope so…