China Says Recovery Gathering Steam

Chinese economic activity picked up in March, according to... well, according to China's statisticians. Can you sense the implicit derision? I hope so. I also hope I'll be forgiven: I employ the very same mocking cadence when it comes to the tabulation of macro statistics in the West. I'm an equal-opportunity skeptic when it comes to the reliability of data purporting to say anything meaningful about very large economies. But China's a special case, where that means it's a former totalitarian