For over a week, investors have been closely watching sharp changes in share prices on China's stock market. Some (1) say the wild movements have (2) because of concerns about the truthfulness of that nation's economic reports. Critics say the reports can fool investors by presenting an unrealistically-strong picture of the economy. An expert on China says the government is not inventing the economic information. But, he believes that the economy is changing quickly from (3) industries to services. He says the ways of measuring this new economic activity are unable to keep up with the changes. China is the world's second-largest economy, a huge trading nation and major importer of everything from (4) to oil and other natural resources. For this reason, its economic problems affect (5) partners and stock markets around the world. Stock prices in Shanghai and overseas markets have been in the news, in part, because of fears that China's economy is not growing as fast as some investors expect. Weakness worries investors. And when many (6) investors sell stocks, it drives down prices. The fears intensify when financial experts worry that China's economy is weaker than the official reports show. Ben Willis is a trader on the New York Stock Exchange. "The Chinese economy, we thought, was growing at seven percent. It's probably only growing at half that. So a 50 percent (7) means you need to re-price, and that's what you're seeing going on in the stock markets and in the commodity markets." Expansion of major industries was part of economic growth in China. Nick Lardy is an expert on the Chinese economy. He works for the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. He says China is better than most developing economies at measuring industrial production, especially from state-owned businesses. But he says much of the economic growth is now coming from the service industry, which is made up largely of smaller, private companies. "Everything from retail and (8) , restaurants and hotels, financial services, including banking, insurance, securities, asset management..." Nick Lardy says restaurants are a good example of the growing services sector. "When I first went to China, there were (9) no restaurants. Now there are millions and millions of restaurants. Collecting the data on all these small firms in the restaurant business is very, very labor (10) . " He adds that better, more detailed records would help Chinese leaders make better-informed decisions on economic issues. But he says the group of workers collecting economic data in China is very small in comparison to the size of its huge, fast-changing economy. I'm Jim Tedder.
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