“Fast, Clear and Accurate”: How Reliable Are Chinese Output and Economic Growth Statistics?

Abstract

China's statistics are widely viewed as unreliable, with data falsification in order to meet economic growth targets increasingly the norm. This report examines some of the most recent criticism of statistics on China's industrial value-added and Gross Domestic Product, and shows this criticism to be unfounded as it is based on misunderstandings about the meaning and coverage of particular data. A lack of evidence on data falsification does not mean that China's statistical system is necessarily honest in its statistical reporting, but recent developments in China's statistical system further suggest that data falsification at the higher levels of the statistical bureaucracy is unlikely. Nevertheless, even if data are not being purposefully falsified by the National Bureau of Statistics, the margin of error in much of the published data is likely to be sufficiently large to allow the statistical authority a choice of final value from a relatively wide range of equally correct values.