The three government numbers China’s economists trust least

Of the 70 or so economic indicators produced by various Chinese government agencies, three are particularly untrustworthy – the figures for the jobless rate, fixed asset investment and personal income, according to a leading investment bank.

In a research note published on Thursday by China International Capital Corporation (CICC), the bank’s economists, led by Liang Hong, wrote that the fixed-asset investment (FAI) data compiled by the National Bureau of Statistics and local governments was likely inflated. But they said the urban jobless rate – the main unemployment indicator produced by the labour ministry – and figures for personal income had underestimated the real picture.

The quality of China’s economic data has long been questioned. Bill Gross, the famous Wall Street bond investor, once called China a “mystery meat” for its lack of transparency and reliable indicators, and President Xi Jinping has urged the country to improve the quality of its economic data.

The Communist Party’s anti-graft watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, recently said that Inner Mongolia and Jilin had been cooking some of their figures. An earlier report from the watchdog said rust belt province Liaoning had been inflating GDP and fiscal revenue numbers.

National data has also been seen as suspect, including figures for gross domestic product, consumer price index (CPI) and housing prices. The country’s headline GDP number, for instance, has been suspiciously steady in the last couple of quarters.