Not everything is as it appears in China
China will step up efforts to investigate and punish any cases of falsified statistics, the country’s chief statistician said in remarks published on Wednesday, highlighting the issue of reliability of Chinese data.
The accuracy of economic statistics in general in China has come under the spotlight in recent years as some growth-obsessed local governments published false economic data.
“In the area of statistics, falsification can be considered as the biggest form of corruption,” Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics told a meeting, in a reference to the Chinese government’s broader crackdown on corruption.
“We must seriously investigate and punish such corruption cases,” Ma was quoted as saying in a statement on the agency’s website.
The comments were published on the same day as official figures showed a surge in exports in January far above expectations, prompting speculation about a return of the practice of disguising currency speculation as trade that had distorted trade figures last year.
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