Matthew Crabbe is Research Director for Mintel in Asia-Pacific, and co-founder of the research company Access Asia (acquired by Mintel). Crabbe has worked exhaustively on trying to make sense of the myriad contradictions in China’s economics and statistics, and he takes a particular interest in the human story behind the rapid growth in China’s economy, and how breakneck change is affecting the Chinese people and their lifestyles. In addition to co-authoring One Billion Shoppers: Accessing Asia’s Consuming Passions (1998) and Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation (2010) with Paul French, Crabbe has written and published hundreds of China consumer products, services and trends market reports. His next book Myth-Busting China’s Numbers: Understanding and Using China’s Statistics (2014), represents the culmination of his more than twenty years’ experience deciphering China’s economic data.
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Understanding China’s economy has never been more important than it is now, given that China is now the world’s second largest economy and is increasingly integrated into the global economic system. Yet the data on China’s economy are poorly understood by businesses in China, and what data there is presents many problems of interpretation. Having spent twenty years analyzing and untangling the statistical contradictions, Matthew Crabbe will explain the contradictions, definitions, and methodologies behind the data, and argue that the lack of reliable data reflects the contradictions and challenges facing China’s economic reform.
