Mainland China has a host of problems, and many people who are trying to come to grips with them. What seems harder to find is the political will necessary to push for solutions.
Take the matter of statistics. Before the end of every year, China announces its economic growth rate for that year. This does not strengthen one's confidence in mainland figures.
After all, it takes time for the different provinces to assemble their figures and send them to Beijing, where they are examined.
What is even stranger is that the growth number announced is never the sum of the provincial figures. The total is always less, betraying Beijing's belief that provincial figures cannot be trusted. In the end, you get an estimate based on Beijing's best guess about how much the provinces have inflated their figures.
For the first half of this year, all mainland provinces reported double-digit growth, with an average growth rate of 12 per cent. However, the National Bureau of Statistics put the country's growth at 10.9 per cent - or 1.1 percentage points less - discounting US$10.06 billion in growth.
Beijing officials know local governments routinely inflate figures, to make themselves look good in the central government's eyes. Officials then estimate how much exaggeration there was, and attempt to come up with a figure that is roughly right.
