You don’t need to study Wikileaks US embassy cables on “man-made” Chinese gross domestic product numbers to appreciate that Beijing can be prone to the occasional rounding error. That suspicion tends to be strongest in the run-up to new year, when the nation shuts down for a week’s vacation. Thursday’s data package evoked the Holy Grail for policymakers everywhere: a slight fall in consumer price inflation, combined with strong – but not too strong – growth. Relax! Enjoy yourselves!

　　你不需要到維基解密(Wikileaks)網(wǎng)站上尋找有關(guān)“人造”中國(guó)國(guó)內(nèi)生產(chǎn)總值(GDP)的美國(guó)使館電文，也能想見(jiàn)北京方面可能偶爾會(huì)在四舍五入方面出錯(cuò)。這種疑心往往在春節(jié)之前最為強(qiáng)烈，春節(jié)時(shí)中國(guó)全國(guó)將放假一周。無(wú)論對(duì)什么地方的政策制定者來(lái)說(shuō)，中國(guó)周四公布的一批數(shù)據(jù)都可謂是“圣杯”：消費(fèi)價(jià)格指數(shù)(CPI)略有下降，加上強(qiáng)勁（但又不是過(guò)于強(qiáng)勁）的增長(zhǎng)。放松吧！好好享受一段太平日子吧！

　　Hardly. Inflation’s retreat, from a 5.1 per cent rate in November to 4.6 per cent in December, is likely to be brief. On a month-to-month basis, consumer price inflation is still rising, by 0.4 per cent, while producer prices for both raw materials and manufactured goods rose even faster, at 1.5 per cent. Food prices, up almost 10 per cent in the last year, are a particular point of pressure for consumers. Citigroup’s index of vulnerability to food price inflation – blending the weight of food in the CPI basket with measures of industrial capacity utilisation and monetary looseness – puts China above all other emerging markets.

　　 但人們很難放心。通脹率從11月的5.1%降至12月的4.6%，這種回落很可能是短暫的。按月度環(huán)比計(jì)算，消費(fèi)價(jià)格指數(shù)仍在上升，升幅為0.4%，而原材料和工業(yè)品出廠價(jià)上升更快，升幅達(dá)到1.5%。食品價(jià)格在過(guò)去一年上漲近10%，尤其給中國(guó)消費(fèi)者帶來(lái)了壓力。根據(jù)花旗集團(tuán)(Citigroup)編制的食品價(jià)格通脹脆弱性指數(shù)（結(jié)合CPI籃子中食品的權(quán)重與工業(yè)產(chǎn)能利用率和貨幣政策寬松程度），中國(guó)的脆弱性高于其它所有新興市場(chǎng)經(jīng)濟(jì)體。

　　On growth, too, while the headline number suggests only a mild acceleration, from 9.6 to 9.8 per cent from the third to the fourth quarter, that is probably not the whole story. In the leaked 2007 cable, Li Keqiang – then a provincial party head, now premier-in-waiting – confided that he preferred to look at three harder-to-manipulate metrics: electricity consumption, rail cargo volume and bank lending. The first two are at full throttle: electricity consumption rose almost 15 per cent last year, 8 percentage points more than in 2009, while freight traffic’s 10 per cent growth over the first 11 months was about double the five-year average. New loans of Rmb480bn last month, meanwhile, were 10 times their level of December 2007. And this is an economy that is supposed to be slowing. The upcoming year of the rabbit could be hairy indeed.

　　增長(zhǎng)方面也有問(wèn)題。盡管整體數(shù)字顯示增長(zhǎng)僅出現(xiàn)溫和加速，從第三季度的9.6%增至第四季度的9.8%，但這很可能并未全面反映實(shí)情。在維基解密泄露的一份2007年美國(guó)外交電文中，時(shí)任省委書記、現(xiàn)為下一屆中國(guó)總理人選的李克強(qiáng)坦承：他寧愿關(guān)注三個(gè)更難操縱的數(shù)據(jù)：用電量、鐵路貨運(yùn)量和銀行放貸金額。目前中國(guó)的前兩個(gè)數(shù)據(jù)正迅猛上升：去年用電量上升近15%，比2009年高出8個(gè)百分點(diǎn)，而貨運(yùn)量在前11個(gè)月增長(zhǎng)10%，大約為五年平均增幅的兩倍。與此同時(shí)，上月新增貸款4800億元人民幣，達(dá)到2007年12月水平的10倍，而中國(guó)經(jīng)濟(jì)本來(lái)應(yīng)該是減速的。即將到來(lái)的兔年可能的確會(huì)令人毛骨聳然。