China to Tackle Fraud That Boosts Provincial GDP Numbers

(Bloomberg) -- China will look into improving statistics quality by using the Internet, cloud computing, big data as well as reducing unnecessary layers in data gathering, Yin Zhongqing, vice director of the National People’s Congress’s financial and economic affairs committee, said at briefing in Beijing.

Data fraud by some Chinese local governments resulted in a higher sum of all provincial GDP added together compared to the national one, Yin said, without identifying the provinces. Statistics collected by different ministries vary in some cases because the agencies adopt different standards, the lawmaker said.

Punishment over data collection violations is “too light”, Yin said.

A recent study by researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Chicago found that China over-reported its economic growth between 2008 and 2016 by an average 1.7 percentage points.

To contact Bloomberg News staff for this story: Yinan Zhao in Beijing at yzhao300@bloomberg.net;Lucille Liu in Beijing at xliu621@bloomberg.net;Douglas Huang in Beijing at khuang203@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shamim Adam at sadam2@bloomberg.net, Penny Peng

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