An economic headline can be translated correctly and still be read incorrectly. A large yuan total and a growth percentage may use different price bases. Here is a short worked example for readers following Chinese business news.

Start with the table heading

亿元 means hundreds of millions of yuan. Divide a value in 亿元 by 10 to express it in billion yuan. The National Bureau of Statistics’ Chinese communiqué for 2025 reports 1401879 亿元; its English edition prints 140,187.9 billion yuan. Those are the same amount. The conversion changes the number unit, while the currency remains yuan.

Read the price-basis note

Note 2 says the GDP amount is calculated at current prices and the growth rate at constant prices. The reported 5.0 percent growth therefore cannot be reproduced simply by dividing two current-price annual totals. The communiqué also calls its figures preliminary, so a historical comparison needs matching revision versions.

Keep the period attached

同比 means comparison with the corresponding period a year earlier. 环比 means comparison with the immediately preceding period. The communiqué’s fourth-quarter growth of 4.5 percent is year on year; it does not describe growth from the third quarter. A cumulative first-three-quarters figure is another period again.

A useful sharing rule

Save the original release, publication date, reporting year, unit, price basis and revision status before paraphrasing the headline. Several news sites repeating the same statistical release do not supply several independent measurements.

This example uses the NBS release published February 28, 2026, read on October 12. It is a source-reading exercise, rather than a new GDP announcement. ThreadEast’s full practical guide adds conversion tables, percentage-point examples and a citation checklist: https://threadeast.xyz/guides/read-chinese-gdp-news?utm_source=leaflet&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=2026-10-12-gdp-reading

Original Chinese release: https://www.stats.gov.cn/sj/zxfb/202602/t20260228_1962662.html

English edition, General Outlook and Notes 1–2: https://www.stats.gov.cn/english/PressRelease/202602/t20260228_1962661.html