Baidu Creates Own Indexes to Paint Picture of China's Economy

Baidu Inc. is using its own trove of data to measure China's economy, devising new gauges that may paint a better picture than the government's. The country's leading search engine has begun using location and search information collected from its more than 600 million users to create indicators and indexes it says could shed light on what's happening with the world's second largest economy. Investors and analysts have long questioned the veracity and methodology of China's government-issued statistics. An example is jobless data, with an unemployment rate staying between 4 percent and 4.3 percent in every quarter since the end of 2002, through a domestic boom, the global financial crisis and now an economy growing at its slowest pace in 25 years. "The economy is slowing down but the unemployment rate published by the government remains steady about 4 percent," senior data scientist Wu Haishan said.