China tries to quell doubts about growth figures with new measures to stop local officials inflating statistics
- New measures for recording data set to come into force next year in hope of tackling notorious anomaly where combined provincial GDP figures exceeded the national total
- In the past local officials have been accused of inflating their figures to boost their chances of getting promotion but now provincial totals will be calculated by the central statistics bureau
China is ready to implement new measures for calculating regional economic output early next year in a move intended to dispel long-standing doubts about its official statistics.
Local officials have long been suspected of cooking the books to enhance their chances of promotion – giving rise to the long-standing anomaly that when gross domestic product figures from all of China’s provinces are added together, the total exceeds the national figure.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Friday that the combined regional figures should now be slightly smaller than the national total because some items of spending do not show up in provincial figures.
It said the new mechanism will unify the standards and procedures for calculating national and regional GDP, adding: “The preparations for the reform are in place and will be officially implemented in early 2020.”
The bureau continued that the “shortcomings and problems” in the previous system had been gradually exposed and, under the reformed unified accounting system, “regional economic output will achieve basic convergence with the country’s GDP figures”.