GDP is an easy number and because it can be so easily gamed it’s very popular with politicians. Press, too, are fucking lazy assholes and will just report whatever simple number they can cite instead of going into details. (We’ve known, incidentally, that GDP is useless and prone to abuse since 1937 at least. Possibly earlier, but it was in 1937 that Kuznets issued his blistering rebuke of it.) Replacing GDP with better metrics has been a constant thing since then, and even as early as the early '00s the WEF proposed a bunch of metrics to replace it. But GDP is a simple number which is easily gamed, so it’s favoured by politicians and journalists.

The USA and Europe are far more open with their books which are independently analyzed by third parties. (Now admittedly those third parties are usually banks, so not particularly trustworthy themselves, but … read on.) Given that I’ve said from the start that it’s trivial to game, however, who says I trust their numbers? (Hint: I don’t. I just trust them slightly more than Russia’s or China’s because there’s independent review of them and the numbers’ sources are more open.)

I’m going to guess you’re an expat living in an expat enclave and thus about as representative as, well, my life in China is to the average Chinese experience. My Russian boots on the ground, however, aren’t even in Moscow, not to mention an expat enclave. They’re in small towns and villages scattered in the western side of the Federation.