http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/business/in-revised-gdp-chinas-economy-34-larger-in-2013.html 2014-12-19 08:40:39 In Revised G.D.P., China’s Economy 3.4% Larger in 2013 The National Bureau of Statistics said the revision was mainly because of better measurement of the size of the service sector after a recent economic census. === SHANGHAI — China said Friday that the size of its economy in 2013 was about 3.4 percent larger than previously reported, with The revision added more than $300 billion to the size of what was already the world’s second-largest economy after the United States. But in making the announcement, the Chinese government also said that the new way the figures were calculated would not affect the current growth rate, which has been close to 7.4 percent for much of this year, near the government’s target. The National Bureau of Statistics said the revision to G.D.P. was mainly because of better measurement of the size of the service sector after a recent economic census. The changes announced Friday were much smaller than earlier revisions of nearly 17 percent higher following the 2004 economic census and an increase of 4.4 percent after the 2008 census. The revisions are part of China’s effort to raise the quality of its government reporting standards after years of skepticism about the veracity of some of the economic numbers it reports. Some analysts were expecting a much larger revision to G.D.P. this week. The Rhodium Group, a New York-based advisory firm with expertise on China, had forecast an upward revision closer to 10 percent. But Daniel Rosen and Beibei Bao, analysts at Rhodium, said that the Chinese authorities had probably not yet made certain changes to the methodology used to measure the size of the economy. The revisions come at a time when China is trying to bolster its economy, which has been showing signs of slowing, including a The size of the United States economy was about $16.7 trillion in 2013, significantly larger than China’s, when measured in nominal G.D.P. But earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund said that by purchasing power parity, a less widely accepted measure of G.D.P. that uses exchange rates to adjust for the prices of selected common goods, China’s economy is nearly the same size as that of the United States. On the purchasing power basis, the I.M.F. forecasts the American economy at $17.6 trillion this year, while China’s is estimated at $17.4 trillion.