The Financial Times published several predictions for 2023. One of them was the following:
Can China restore economic growth to more than 5 per cent?
"Yes. China is facing a bleak ending to 2022; the opening from its “zero-Covid” policy will sadly claim many more lives yet and is overwhelming hospitals, as the pandemic did elsewhere in 2020-21. But a lot can and will change over the course of the year. Once China learns to “live with Covid”, economic activity should bounce back strongly. Consumer spending will be energised by a pandemic-fuelled glut in savings and Beijing will launch a stimulus package focused on infrastructure." James Kynge
Preferably resolves according to reporting from the Financial Times, though I reserve the right to resolve by my own judgment if necessary.
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3.00Why would you resolve it based on a prediction from the end of 2022? This is a actual in-depth analysis of the PRC's 2023 GDP growth rate https://rhg.com/research/through-the-looking-glass-chinas-2023-gdp-and-the-year-ahead/
@Ayrtonite I stated pretty explicitly that I would defer to judgment from the Financial Times rather than my own if possible. Financial Times suggested they got this prediction right. 🤷
https://www.ft.com/content/7eef99e6-6bd5-4e84-85c1-ec77cc0671af
Please LMK if you disagree with this decision - happy to discuss.
@CarsonGale I don't have access to the Financial Times, could you copy/paste the relevant text from the article?
@Gabrielle Yes - the relevant text is below.
The Financial Times’s team of crystal ball gazers had their best year for a while in 2023, with only three wrong answers — though we got these pretty wrong. The S&P 500 did not fall by more than 10 per cent, but climbed over 20 per cent (though driven mostly by just seven tech stocks). Europe didn’t experience blackouts, though we said this would happen only in a very cold winter (it wasn’t). And there wasn’t a string of defaults in Africa, though Ethiopia did default this week.
@CarsonGale Hmm, so they didn't explicitly state it, just implicitly. I'm guessing then that they're using the official numbers, not any analysis (like above) of the actual GDP growth.
I think you resolved correctly, matching what the Financial Times, but I'm not sure that they judged themselves correctly.
@CarsonGale I'm not saying that you should use your own judgment over the financial times, just to use a source that does not rely on taking the GDP growth rate presented by the CCP at face value and actually conducts in-depth research. The source I am providing from the Rhodium Group goes into detail on why and just how far off a 5% GDP growth rate is. The authors are Daniel H. Rosen, Logan Wright, Charlie Vest, and Rogan Quinn.
"In sum, 2023 started with a great deal of optimism for an economic rebound. Despite the abundant evidence that the recovery was falling short of expectations, Beijing has not wavered in insisting that the economy is still on track. In our view, growth in 2023 was probably closer to 1.5% than the “around 5%” that Beijing will report in January." Would highly recommend giving it a read https://rhg.com/research/through-the-looking-glass-chinas-2023-gdp-and-the-year-ahead/
@Ayrtonite I just want to point out that to change the resolution criteria from 'what the FT reports (given the FT finds the CCP's numbers credible or reportable) to 'an estimate of what they probably are really ' would be a huge change, and as someone who bet under the explicit conditions of the former I would lose a lot of mana and would be very unhappy about that.
@JoshuaWilkes It comes down to the spirit of the question vs. what the financial times says. It would make more sense to answer the question of "Can China restore economic growth to more than 5% in 2023?" based on the best information we can gather vs. solely going off of one source.
@Ayrtonite I think the position you are arguing for can fairly be characterised as "description text and clarifying comments from the creator should be subordinate to spirit of the question". Given that description text and clarifying comments typically exist because spirit of the question is subjective, this would be a retrograde step for Manifold.
@Ayrtonite like, I understand your frustration in this example, but the whole point of getting Carson to specify a source is so that at market close they can't choose between wildly different reporting and estimates. It's good that they specified the FT because then bettors have more knowledge and less standing to complain when FT is actually used as a source.
IMF thinks 5.4% as of early November https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2023/11/07/pr23380-imf-staff-completes-2023-article-iv-mission-to-the-peoples-republic-of-china
Relevant related market: https://manifold.markets/RobertGledhill/will-chinese-dollar-denominated-exp
