Recently, the Chinese economy has gotten attention from investors, financial professionals and policy makers all over the world. Therefore It is good timing to start analyzing the Chinese economy by ourselves, rather than just watching TV news. Because we should evaluate the performance of the Chinese economy by ourselves. In my articles I would like to explain how to analyze that step by step. This article is for anyone who are interested in China, including beginners of data analysis. Do not worry as no fee is needed and it is easy to understand. Let us start now!
1. Database
The database should have many kinds of data about the Chinese economy and be updated periodically. It should be available without any fees because this database will be used for everyone, not professional researchers who have a budget for data. Quandl is considered as the best database for this purpose. It has more than 20 million data sets and most of them are available for free. In my view, it is good that we can start analyzing the economy by using data which are available for free in Quandl. In this database, National Bureau of Statistics of China is an awesome data source for our purpose. It says "Statistics of China related to finance, industry, trade, agriculture, real estate and transportation". There are more than 55,000 data sets in it so it is enough to start analyzing Chinese economy.
2. Analytic tools
R language is the best tool for analytics for everyone including beginners of data analysis. There are several reasons. 1. It is available without any fees. 2. There are many packages to analyze data so that we do not need programming from scratch. 3. There are a lot of documents and tutorials in English. Let us go to the web of R project and download R. Then we can start data analysis anyway. R and Quandl keep good relationship as Data can be accessed directly from R. There is no need to open the website of Quandl every time data are obtained. That is wonderful! If you are familiar with python, it is also good to analyze data. When we need more complex models such as deep learning, I will use "torch" for modeling these models, although it is not for beginners.
3. Tutorials
DataCamp has a good tutorial about how to use R with Quandl. You can learn R by using it. It is available for free. If you are beginners of R, you can take several tutorials for beginners in it. They are also for free. If you want to access all tutorials and videos, you should pay fees. For beginners, I do not think they need to pay fees in order to take courses for beginners. When you try to be an expert of R, it is recommended to take your favorite courses in DataCamp. Some of the courses require to pay fees.
OK, we have data, tools and tutorials. Let us start analyzing Chinese economy. It must be fun!
Note: Toshifumi Kuga’s opinions and analyses are personal views and are intended to be for informational purposes and general interest only and should not be construed as individual investment advice or solicitation to buy, sell or hold any security or to adopt any investment strategy. The information in this article is rendered as at publication date and may change without notice and it is not intended as a complete analysis of every material fact regarding any country, region market or investment.
Data from third-party sources may have been used in the preparation of this material and I, Author of the article has not independently verified, validated such data. I accept no liability whatsoever for any loss arising from the use of this information and relies upon the comments, opinions and analyses in the material is at the sole discretion of the user.