Now, China must come clean about its national economic data
Tom Rafferty welcomes the recent admissions by Chinese regional officials that figures were inflated in the past, but says the crackdown needs to be even more rigorous to include national-level data
The scale of the revisions is nevertheless revealing. Liaoning acknowledged inflating fiscal data by an average of 20 per cent a year in 2011-14, while coal-rich Inner Mongolia has reduced the 2016 figures it previously published for fiscal revenue and industrial output by 25 per cent and 40 per cent respectively.
Tianjin went further still, with its main development zone slashing its previously reported gross domestic product for 2016 by one-third. This shows the extraordinary growth rates recorded by Tianjin in recent years – real GDP rose by an average of 14 per cent a year in 2002-16, propelling it to the highest GDP per capita in the country – to have been at least partially illusory.
Others among China’s 31 provinces and regions on the mainland are likely to follow suit.
Arithmetic with Chinese characteristics, where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole
