How much did Japan's GDP decline in the first quarter? Many media wrote wrong, and Nansheng came to reveal the answer

Nansheng said in this life

2024-05-17 10:23Posted in Guangdong financial field creators

Japan's economy fell by 2% year-on-year in the first quarter of 2024, dragged down by personal consumption, declining corporate spending, and weak exports of goods – I'm sure many netizens have seen similar reports in the last day or two. Unfortunately, such news is fake.

Japan's GDP in the first quarter did not fall by 2% year-on-year

It is correct to say that Japan's economy contracted by 0.2% quarter-on-quarter and 2% annualized quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter of 2024, using calendar-adjusted and seasonally adjusted rules. It is clear that this 2% decline is intended to be the result of an annualized reduction of 0.5% in the first quarter.

Compared with the erroneous reports of Zhongxin Jingwei, Guangming.com, Jiemian News, and Sina Finance, the report of Reference News is accurate, he wrote: Excluding the impact of price changes, GDP fell by 0.5% quarter-on-quarter in the first quarter and 2% on an annualized basis, which is the first negative growth in two quarters.

But it's a pity that the reference news newspaper still failed to give the "year-on-year" that our Chinese netizens are used to. In previous articles, Nan Sheng has repeatedly suggested that when we report foreign news, we should try to "transform into the thinking and concepts that our Chinese people are accustomed to", rather than blindly copying them.

For example, let's say a car is traveling at 100 mph. In mainland media, if the unit is not specified, the default is kilometers, but in many Western countries it is miles. This requires the Chinese media to either convert it to kilometers or not omit the word mile when reporting on this content.

If the word mile is omitted, it is very likely that mainland netizens will have a wrong understanding. Returning to the previous question about Japan's economic growth rate in the first quarter, the editors of media such as Jiemian News and Zhongxin Jingwei estimate that they are ignorant and cannot distinguish the difference between concepts such as year-on-year and month-on-month annualization.

Referring to the editor of the news newspaper, it is estimated that he did not dig deep into the national economic statistics report released by the Japanese Cabinet Office, and wrote an article to share it after seeing that "the year-on-month and month-on-month annualized data appeared in the overview part of the report", ignoring that there is a year-on-year comparison hidden behind the report.

What was the year-on-year value of Japan's economy in the first quarter?

Nansheng downloaded the report, let's look at the chart above: real GDP after excluding price changes was 140.44 trillion yen, compared to 140.78 trillion yen in the same period last year, a year-on-year decrease of 342.7 billion yen, a year-on-year decrease of 0.2%, not 2%.

At 140.44 trillion yen, Japan's real GDP for the first quarter of 2024 is the true level of development after excluding the fluctuation of the prices of various commodities such as goods and services. Both on a month-on-month and year-on-year basis, Japan's economy is sluggish.

But the size of the economies of the countries we usually mention is calculated according to market prices, that is, "nominal GDP". The GDP of the United States reached about 7 trillion US dollars in the first quarter, and the mainland expanded to 29.63 trillion yuan, all of which are calculated according to market prices.

Next, we also need to find Japan's nominal GDP at market prices

Nansheng also downloaded the report, and looking at the chart above, the answer is: 149.785 trillion yen, compared to 144.894 trillion yen in the same period of the previous year. Excluding price fluctuations, Japan's economy grew at a nominal rate of 3.4% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year.

In other words, Japan's economy was sluggish in the first quarter, falling by 0.2%, excluding inflation. However, driven by rising prices, its nominal GDP has hit a "record peak in the first quarter of the year", that is, a record high.

It's not over yet! With 149.785 trillion yen, is the Japanese economy higher than Germany's 1,049.32 billion euros in the first quarter?

To participate in international comparisons, it is necessary to draw out the exchange rate. At present, the common method is to convert it into US dollars, according to this calculation: Japan's GDP fell to 1,008.3 billion in the first quarter. Due to the impact of the depreciation of the yen, Japan's GDP fell sharply in dollar terms.

Germany's GDP rose to $1,139.3 billion in dollar terms in the first quarter, an advantage of more than $100 billion over Japan. Considering that the depreciation of the yen has increased since April, Germany's position as the world's third largest economy has been consolidated. This article is written by Nansheng, welcome to forward, comment, leave a message and share!

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Personal opinion, for reference only