NASA Says China Economy Slowing: What the Glow-Curve Reveals
By Tim Chrisman, Contributing Author and Host of SkytopTV's "Case for Space" Talk Show / April 22nd, 2025
Tim Chrisman is a space policy and geopolitics expert who writes extensively about the future of humanity in space. He leads the Foundation for the Future, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. which is leading the policy conversation around space infrastructure. Tim founded the Association for Space Finance, the industry association representing space investors, and whose membership ranges from small family offices to Barclays Investment Bank.
Tim is a former Army officer, who spent nearly a decade leading intelligence teams in combat and special operations units through five deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. After his military service, Tim was selected to be a special advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff before joining the Central Intelligence Agency. He held multiple assignments at the Agency, including with the Directorate of Operations and Directorate of Analysis, culminating in a role supporting the National Space Council.
Tim studied at American University where he earned his Masters in International Relations and Affairs; the second of his two master’s degrees (the other is in Intelligence Studies). Tim is the author of the book Humanity in Space and is a prolific writer about the expanse of our civilization in space.
China’s electric meters and orbiting satellites keep telling the same uncomfortable story: the economy has been growing far more slowly than Beijing admits—and the new 125 percent U.S. tariff wall threatens to tip that chronic mis‑measurement into outright contraction.
China’s leaders maintain that real gross domestic product (GDP) will expand “around four percent” in 2025. Two yardsticks Beijing cannot massage—kilowatt‑hours burned and night‑time luminosity captured by NASA’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS)—show growth already nearer two percent before Washington slammed the door with an across‑the‑board 125 percent “reciprocal” tariff on 10 April.
A tariff wall with no back door
The White House paired the tariff with a demand that any nation seeking preferential access to the U.S. market—Mexico, Canada, Vietnam, even the European Union—help police Chinese re‑labelling, the practice of shipping Chinese goods under a third‑country flag. Proof the clamp‑down is real arrived almost immediately: DHL Express said it will suspend all business‑to‑consumer parcels worth more than $800 to the United States because the new paperwork burden outweighs profit. Brokers in Shenzhen now whisper about a 30 percent loss of U.S. sales, enough to shave roughly 1 ½ percentage points off headline GDP.
Electricity has been mutinying since 2008
The rupture between official statistics and physical reality is no recent embarrassment. International Energy Agency (IEA) and National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) data show that from 2008 to 2024 reported GDP expanded by an average 7 ½ percent a year, but electricity demand rose only ≈ 5 ¼ percent. A two‑point gap may sound small in any single year; compounded over 17 years it is seismic. Run the math and today’s Chinese economy is roughly 40 percent smaller than Beijing’s ledgers imply. (A base that grows 7.5 percent annually for 17 years ends up 1.6 times larger than a base growing 5.2 percent)
The gulf has widened, not narrowed:
Total electricity generation fell 1.3 percent year‑on‑year in January–February 2025, only the third peacetime winter decline since the 1990s.
Coal‑fired output plunged 5.8 percent over the same period, despite the official GDP headline of 5.4 percent.
How big is the statistical fog?
The World Bank puts China’s 2023 output at US $17.8 trillion in current dollars. If electricity use and night‑time‑light data are right that official growth has been overstated by about 40 percent, the “real” economy is closer to US $12.7 trillion—roughly 99 trillion yuan at today’s exchange rate. That compares with Beijing’s own 2023 tally of 129 trillion yuan. In other words, once the watt‑hours and photons are accounted for, China is likely one‑quarter smaller than it claims and only three‑quarters the size of the U.S. economy, not the near‑peer many headline tables suggest.
China seen from orbit
VIIRS night‑lights, which integrate every lit factory, shopping street and construction site, have grown just 2.8 percent a year since 2013—barely half the GDP print. Oxford Economics told the Financial Times last year that official data likely over‑state economic output by about 20 percent. If services were truly booming, urban skylines would still brighten; instead, satellite images plateau.
Energy efficiency is no alibi
Beijing likes to argue that services and renewables decouple growth from power use. Yet a Reuters deep‑dive shows energy‑intensity gains stalled after 2018—each extra yuan of GDP has demanded roughly the same energy since then. In other words, the power‑to‑GDP divorce cannot be blamed on a suddenly ethereal service economy.
From slow bleed to stall
Layer the long‑running statistical overstatement onto today’s trade shock and China’s risk profile changes color:
Official baseline: IMF’s 4.6 percent.
Adjusted for the electricity‑light gap: ≈ 2 percent.
Minus tariff drag (‑1 ½ pp): teeters on zero.
Even megabanks are blinking: UBS cut its 2025 forecast to 3.4 percent within hours of the tariff order.
A swing of one percentage point now separates “slow growth” from recession. Beijing could cushion the blow with a fiscal surge or a 10 percent devaluation of the Chinese yuan (CNY), but either course courts new dangers—heavier debt for the former, capital flight for the latter.
Signals worth watching
VIIRS night‑lights, April data (due late May). A third annual dip would all but confirm sub‑two‑percent real growth.
Shanghai Containerized Freight Index on the U.S. West Coast lane. If rates remain 15 percent below March’s pre‑tariff surge once front‑loading clears, exports are choking.
Youth unemployment, July NBS print. A return above last summer’s 21 percent peak would force Beijing to break budget caution.
Yuan at 7.90 per U.S. dollar. A decisive breach signals that currency relief, not austerity, is Beijing’s chosen painkiller.
Think of these four gauges as the dashboard lights on China’s economic cockpit—each illuminates a distinct failure mode the headline data can’t show.
Night‑time lights (VIIRS). Satellites aggregate every lumen coming off factories, shopping streets and building sites; the data are near real‑time and essentially tamper‑proof. If April’s composite prints a third straight year‑on‑year decline, it will confirm that activity is slipping even in the usually resilient coastal megacities. In past slowdowns a two‑month dip in lights has preceded sharp falls in industrial output within the next quarter, because exporters have no way to “front‑load” photons.
Shanghai Containerized Freight Index (SCFI) – U.S. West Coast lane. Roughly one‑third of the value shipped from China to America still moves in boxes through Pacific gateways. Freight rates collapse when shippers pull bookings—well before customs data register a drop. During the 2020 Covid shock, the SCFI fell 40 percent six weeks before export volumes rolled over. If the U.S.‑bound lane holds 15 percent below its March pre‑tariff surge, it will mean the new 125 percent duty is biting harder than any tariff round since 2018.
Youth unemployment (NBS 16‑to‑24 series). A return to the record 21 percent peak would be more than a social headache; every one‑point rise in the youth jobless rate has historically clipped 0.2 percentage points off household consumption growth within six months. It is Beijing’s most politically sensitive datapoint—so if it bleeds higher, expect an emergency stimulus package rather than incremental easing.
Yuan at 7.90 per U.S. dollar. Currency weakness acts as China’s pressure valve. In the 2015 devaluation episode, a three‑percent slide in the yuan triggered $100 billion in monthly capital outflows and forced Beijing to burn $150 billion of reserves to steady the rate. A decisive break of the 7.90 line would signal that policymakers have chosen an FX lifeline over financial‑stability optics—and it usually drags the rest of emerging‑Asia currencies with it.
Together, these gauges give a cleaner, faster read on the real economy than any quarterly communiqué from the National Bureau of Statistics. If two or more flash red at once, the odds will shift from a “stall‑speed” 2 percent growth scenario toward outright contraction—well before the headline GDP number admits it.
The bottom line: the world has been reading China’s economy by the wrong light for years. With Washington now slamming shut the last dependable export valve, those dim indicators risk flicking off entirely.