GDP is a garbage metric in the first place, and even moreso when you try to apply it to a mixed economy like China’s. GDP considers rent seeking and the real, productive economy to be equivalent. It’s absurd.

If you look at the gross national product accounts of the United States, they depict America is getting richer and richer when people have to pay higher rents. And richer and richer if you own a home and your housing price is inflated. In the national income and product accounts, they say that if a homeowner were to rent out his house to himself, what would he charge for the rent? Well, as rents go up, as if housing prices go up, GDP goes up.

One way to accelerate GDP is to fall behind in your credit card accounts. If you fall behind in your credit card payments, then your interest rates go up from 19% to a penalty rate of 29%. The GDP accounts say that that is providing “financial services,” and GDP goes up.

I’m not familiar enough with Gini to know how much to trust it, so I can’t speak to that. But China’s Gini has dropped from 43.7 in 2010 to 37.1 in 2020. I’m not sure what it is today.