China’s provinces revise 2018 GDP estimates amid questions about economic data quality

All 31 of China’s provinces have revised their GDP estimates for 2018, with at least 12 publishing smaller amounts than first reported

Revisions come amid scepticism about the reliability of Chinese economic figures, due to discrepancies between provincial and national economic data

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Local governments in China have been accused of faking economic data, inflating revenues and downplaying their debt. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 4:30pm, 23 Jan 2020Updated: 11:29pm, 23 Jan 2020

More than a third of China’s provincial governments have downgraded their 2018 gross domestic product estimates following a crackdown from Beijing on local governments falsifying data to exaggerate their economic performance.

The National Bureau of Statistics said last year it would unify the way it calculates provincial and national economic output from early 2020, amid scepticism about the reliability of Chinese economic figures, particularly at a local level where governments have strong incentives to inflate headline numbers for political promotion.

Over the past week, all of China’s 31 provinces revised their gross domestic product (GDP) figures for 2018, with at least 12 publishing smaller amounts than first reported.

The revisions would “improve the quality of the regional data” and help investors better assess the status of regional government finances, said Betty Wang, Greater China senior economist at ANZ.

Among the biggest downgrades was from the northern province of Tianjin, which revised its economic output to 1.33 trillion yuan (US$192.5 billion), a plunge of 29 per cent from the previous estimate of 1.88 trillion yuan, according to data on the Tianjin government website.

Several other provinces in the north of China, which have been struggling to meet growth targets over the past few years, also cut their GDP estimates. Heilongjiang downgraded its 2018 GDP by 21 per cent to 1.28 trillion yuan, while neighbouring Liaoning revised down its data by 7 per cent to 2.35 trillion yuan, from 2.55 trillion yuan.