Improving my China alternate GDP index

I mentioned in my last piece that I needed more services compnents in my alternate China GDP  index.  I've decided to add the number of passenger-kilometres travelled to the index.

This is a chart of passenger-km seasonally adjusted.  Note the sharp plunge in 2003 with the SARS virus, analogous to the new SARS virus now.  Fortunately, SARS is much less infectious than COVID-19, so the downturn was confined to China.  Now it is global, so the economic damage will be much worse.

The new calculation of alternate GDP, which includes civil aviation passenger-kilometres, is a better fit to GDP  than the old one.  It now has two service indicators included in its calculation—the volume of retail sales and air travel.  It also tracks published GDP more closely for the last few years than the old index did.

I first introduced my alternate GDP index here.