{"id":20732,"date":"2013-06-19T07:57:32","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T11:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=20732"},"modified":"2016-12-18T11:14:43","modified_gmt":"2016-12-18T16:14:43","slug":"even-the-chinese-statistics-office-couldnt-accept-these-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/06\/19\/even-the-chinese-statistics-office-couldnt-accept-these-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Even the Chinese statistics office couldn&#8217;t accept these numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em>&#8216;s ChinaRealtime section, an amusing story about a local Chinese government whose official statistics were so unrealistic that <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.wsj.com\/chinarealtime\/2013\/06\/19\/a-rare-look-into-how-china-fudges-its-numbers\/\" target=\"_blank\">the central statistics office called them out on it<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It\u2019s typically advisable not to accept Chinese economic data at face value \u2013 as even the country\u2019s own premier will tell you. Figures on everything from inflation and industrial output to energy consumption and international trade often don\u2019t seem to gel with observation and sometimes struggle to stack up when compared with other indicators.<\/p>\n<p>How the figures are massaged and by whom is as much a secret as the real data itself. But in an unusual move, the National Bureau of Statistics \u2013 clearly frustrated with the lies, damn lies \u2013 has recently outed a local government it says was involved in a particularly egregious case of number fudging, providing rare insight into just how we\u2019re being deceived.<\/p>\n<p>According to a statement on the statistics bureau\u2019s website dated June 14 (in Chinese), the economic development and technology information bureau of Henglan, a town in southern China\u2019s Guangdong province, massively overstated the gross industrial output of large firms in the area.<\/p>\n<p>[. . .]<\/p>\n<p>The statistics bureau doesn\u2019t say why Henglan inflated its industrial output numbers. But indications that a local economy is sagging could reflect poorly on the prospects for promotion of local officials, and China\u2019s southern provinces have been particularly hard hit by the global slowdown in demand for the country\u2019s exports. Factories have closed, moving inland and overseas in search of cheaper labor, denting local government revenues.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen governments are looking to burnish their track record, that can put the local statistics departments in a very awkward situation,\u201d said a commentary piece that ran Tuesday in the <em>Economic Daily<\/em> (in Chinese), a newspaper under the control of the State Council, China\u2019s cabinet. The article said that one of the biggest obstacles to ensuring accurate data is that the agencies responsible for crunching the numbers aren\u2019t independent from local authorities. Moreover, it argues that penalties for producing fake data were too mild to act as a deterrent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the Wall Street Journal&#8216;s ChinaRealtime section, an amusing story about a local Chinese government whose official statistics were so unrealistic that the central statistics office called them out on it: It\u2019s typically advisable not to accept Chinese economic data at face value \u2013 as even the country\u2019s own premier will tell you. Figures on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,22,25,84],"tags":[1085,859,290],"class_list":["post-20732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-china","category-economics","category-government","tag-fakenews","tag-manufacturing","tag-statistics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5oo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20733,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20732\/revisions\/20733"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}