Interesting reading from Bloomberg today is they look at the skews in trade data that added as much as 30% in trade with Hong Kong.
All Chinese data is suspicious but trade numbers are one of the easiest to poke holes in because its trading partners also report them.
A discrepancy between Hong Kong and Chinese figures for bilateral trade remains even after a crackdown last year on Chinese companies’ use of fake export-invoicing to evade limits on importing foreign currency. China recorded $1.31 of exports to Hong Kong in June for every $1 in imports Hong Kong tallied from China, for a $6.4 billion difference.
That ratio compares to $1.23 in 2011, $1.10 in 2010 and $1.03 in 2009 but is far from the $2.35 distortion at the peak in March 2013.
The fresh rise could be a sign that investors have found new ways to disguise capital flows as trade.
