Added significance for China GDP

beijing» Just 19 days after the fourth quarter ended, China will tell the world how its economy performed — almost a month before Japan and two months before tiny New Zealand.

Such speed is but one reason behind skepticism about how well China’s economic reports inform the financial world.

The growth tally, due at 10 a.m. Tuesday Beijing time, takes on added significance this time around, as plunging mainland stocks and a weakening yuan shake global markets from copper to South Africa’s rand and even U.S. blue chips.

The National Bureau of Statistics has modernized its tools for measuring the $10 trillion-plus economy and cut down on provincial exaggeration, but old Soviet influences remain, such as an emphasis on production, not the spending method used in most advanced economies.

And China is trying to better capture services activity, a bright spot in an economy shifting away from old drivers such as residential construction and low-end exports.

While politicians the world over are prone to boast or bemoan their nation’s growth rates, China’s figures routinely are compared against pre-set growth targets, another hangover from the Soviets.

The Communist Party vowed to double 2010 output and income levels by 2020, a goal President Xi Jinping has stressed needs an average 6.5 percent expansion in the next few years to achieve.

That means a full-year or fourthquarter reading below the 6.9 percent forecast by economists for both periods could add to calls to stimulate the economy with more government spending and monetary easing, while a betterthan-forecast reading might relieve such pressure.

Recent data generally have pointed to a broad stabilization, albeit at lower levels.