These "pandas" aren't what they seem. REUTERS/Donald Chan Earlier Monday China released its quarterly gross-domestic-product accounts, which revealed that the economy grew 6.9% in the 12 months to September. The figure, as it had done in three of the past four GDP releases, managed to beat the median market forecast for growth of 6.8%.

But some economists say there are good reasons to be skeptical.

Danny Gabay of Fathom Consulting spoke on BBC Radio 4's Today Programme on Monday morning, and he's more skeptical than most. Gabay said China's actual growth was less than half of the official rate.

When asked about the growth statistics, he said: "Quite frankly we don't believe them. It's not just that they come in suspiciously close to the target, it's that they're produced remarkably quickly and rarely revised."

Fathom uses a version of the Li Keqiang index as its proxy for Chinese growth, a measure that is suggesting an expansion closer to 3% year-on-year. That takes into account electricity production, rail-freight cargo, and bank lending.

Gabay went on: "We're in a hard landing, we haven't got to the bottom yet ... What China has done is very much the same as what the Americans did, the British did, the Europeans did, and the Japanese did before all of us. Massive credit surge, all of it went on real estate, prices have fallen, there'll be a banking day of reckoning."

This is what Fathom's preferred index looks like, compared with GDP:

Some economists think that the index is outdated and that as China transitions toward services and away from heavy industry, it won't be a good measure of what's actually happening in the economy.

But Gabay isn't the only one raising an eyebrow at the latest Chinese figures. Reflective of the view of some in the markets, Julian Evans-Pritchard, China economist at Capital Economics, believes "the continued stability of the official GDP figures will further cement concerns over their credibility."

Here's Evans-Pritchard on his initial take of the figures and why he believes they seem hard to trust.

"These figures need to be taken with a grain of salt as official GDP growth appears to have become a poor gauge of the performance of China's economy," he wrote.

"Flaws with how the GDP deflator is calculated, along with political pressure to meet growth targets that have become increasingly at risk, have meant that official growth rates have not slowed nearly as quickly as most third party measures of growth in recent years."

Evans-Pritchard suggests economic growth appears to be stabilizing after slowing sharply in the early parts of the year — but at levels significantly below those reported by the government.

He points to Capital Economics' China Activity Proxy index, an alternate growth measure for economic activity within the nation, that stabilized at 4.5% annual growth in both the second and third quarters this year.

Aside from suggesting that the government is overstating the pace of growth in China by a significant margin, Evans-Pritchard suggests underlying economic conditions "are subdued but stable." Like others, he also suggests stronger fiscal spending and more rapid credit growth will limit the downside risks to growth over the coming quarters.

Fitting with that view, China's government released fiscal expenditure and revenues data before the GDP release with official expenditure accelerating by 26.9% in the 12 months to September. The sharp increase left government expenditure this year up 16.4% from the same period a year earlier, an increase on the 14.8% pace seen between January to August.

Clearly the government is turning on the fiscal-spending taps to shore up flagging economic growth. While its impact has yet to be seen in official data releases, the acceleration has some predicting that Chinese economic growth may accelerate in the final quarter of 2015.