Lies, damned lies and statistics.' For years, economists and ordinary mainlanders alike have had serious doubts over the accuracy and credibility of their official statistics. It has become a recurring joke at this time of year, when the National Bureau of Statistics and its branches release national and regional economic growth figures for the previous year.
This invariably shows that the addition of the gross domestic product figures announced by the provinces and municipalities is far greater than the value of national gross domestic product - which reached 33.5 trillion yuan (HK$38 trillion) last year.
To the bureau's credit, it has admitted that the mainland's data-gathering mechanism needs improving and blamed local officials for padding figures to further their careers. It has deployed its own data-sampling teams nationwide to improve the accuracy and reliability of the data, rather than relying solely on the figures supplied by the regional authorities.
But the improvements have been slow coming. On Thursday, the bureau released the economic growth figures for last year and again invited national ridicule.
The focus is on its data showing that property prices in 70 large and medium cities, a national benchmark, rose a mere 1.5 per cent last year, of which prices for new residential flats were up 1.3 per cent and prices for the secondary market were up 2.4 per cent.
This has elicited a slew of comments on the internet and even some state media in the past few days, after both economists and ordinary mainlanders expressed disbelief and dismay.