China Admits Economic Data Is Fake: “Some Local Statistics Are Falsified”
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Dec 12, 2016
For years we’ve been writing about “fake data” coming out of China’s economic reports. As an example, we reported the following chart on import data back in April (see “The Chart Proving That China’s Trade Data Has Never Been This Fake”). Can anyone spot the outlier?
Now, China’s “top statistician” has confirmed via an article in the “People’s Daily” newspaper that “some local statistics are falsified, and fraud and deception happen from time to time.” Wow, so there’s a chance that China’s economy didn’t actually grow at a precise YoY rate of exactly 7.00% for the past decade…that always struck us as unlikely. Per the Financial Times:
China’s top statistician has acknowledged the country’s problems with falsification of economic data, pledging severe punishment for perpetrators in a nod to widespread suspicion that official numbers often fail to reflect true economic conditions.
“Currently, some local statistics are falsified, and fraud and deception happen from time to time, in violation of statistics laws and regulations,” Ning Jizhe, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, wrote in a column for Communist party mouthpiece the People’s Daily on Thursday.
Foreign economists and investors have long expressed doubts about China’s economic data. Most prominent are concerns about gross domestic product figures. Compared with other countries. China’s inflation-adjusted GDP growth rates are remarkably stable from quarter to quarter, even as nominal figures show considerable volatility. The NBS has denied charges that it manipulates inflation data to massage headline growth figures.
The Rest…HERE
