Xi tells Liaoning officials to clean up their political act and stop faking data

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday warned officials in Liaoning to stop producing fake economic data, after the province was engulfed in scandals over inflating its income.

Xi also demanded that politicians from the province, which saw an unprecedented vote rigging scandal last year, establish a “clean political ecology”.

In a meeting with National People’s Congress deputies from the rust-belt province, Xi said that measures should be taken to support local industrial development. State-owned enterprises should play a key role in that development, he said.

However, he said “the practice [of faking economic data] must be stopped”.

In January, Liaoning Governor Chen Qiufa admitted that the government had been cooking its economic data from 2011 to 2014, using fraudulent figures to influence central-government decision making. Officials used the fake data to advance their careers.