Another Chinese city admits ‘fake’ economic data

Chinese provinces and cities have long been suspected of cooking up numbers, with the focus on local government officials, whose performance are often assessed based on how well their respective economies have performed

By: Reuters | Beijing | Published: January 17, 2018 2:03 pm

Another Chinese city admits 'fake' economic data

In an agenda-setting Communist Party Congress in October, President Xi Jinping said China has now entered a “new era” where the country will prize quality growth over quantity. (AP photo)

A northern industrial city in China said its 2017 fiscal revenue was significantly less than it had earlier estimated partly due to “fake” additions, making a revision just days after reports of similar incidents fueled scepticism over official data.

Baotou in China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region revised its estimated fiscal revenue in 2017 lower by nearly 50 percent in an annual work report, a copy of which was published on the Baotou government’s website on Jan. 13. The Baotou city government said in the report that the revision was due to factors including “fake additions”. It did not say how the additions came about or who was responsible.