
Chinese local governments rush to admit fake data - handpickednames
https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Chinese-local-governments-rush-to-admit-fake-data
======
Bucephalus355
China has a long history of doing this.

During Mao’s reign, agriculture numbers were padded constantly. They were only
padded by a few percent at each level, but as each reporting hierarchy added
its own padding, eventually you got massive overestimates.

This is why 50 million people died in the famine under Map, more than the
Holocaust and “gulag archipelago” combined. I don’t think people realize just
how bad it was, it was a time of absolutely insanity and deprivation.

40% of all building structures were torn down between between 1958-1963 if
that gives you any idea of how detached from reality society under Mao was.

Also, China is lying about their pollution numbers, and just simply moving the
factories farther west. Western China is one of the most rural parts of the
world and its very hard to measure / prove who is using what / polluting what.
No matter what the US does regarding global warming, it’s very likely any
gains will be “eaten” by a growing, data faking, Chinese government.

~~~
DontGiveTwoFlux
Citations needed.

~~~
simias
You shouldn't be downvoted. Those are harsh accusations, they deserve sources.
Because it fits what most of us expect the Chinese government could be doing
makes it even more important to have sources, confirmation bias is the enemy
of rational thinking.

~~~
nothrabannosir
Asking for references is one thing, but this “citation needed<EOF>” trope is
growing old. It’s dismissive , and as lazy as it accuses the poster of being.
It’s flippant and disrespectful.

Let me put it this way: if someone then _does_ provide citations, it suddenly
sounds harsh, and could do with an apology. But in that case, why not be civil
to begin with? Like you were, for example.

Or, if you’re actually interested in the pursuit of truth, why not try and
truly contribute by spending 30 seconds looking for references yourself, and
adding those??

~~~
idrios
You had a comment here complaining about 'carpet bombing with [citation
needed]' and you deleted it, but I agree with you on this.

Wikipedia posted a great article called "Why Wikipedia cannot claim the earth
is not flat." [1] It describes the various ways special interest groups and
fringe fanatics will fight to make their views recognized. One of the ways
they called "gaming the system" where they frivolously request [citation
needed].

The fact that China underwent a terrible famine shortly following the
Communist Revolution is pretty common knowledge. Other than that, he wasn't
clear what he was requesting citations for.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_cannot...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Why_Wikipedia_cannot_claim_the_earth_is_not_flat)

~~~
elipsey
I occasionally post this way when I realize part way through the original
article that I have wasted my time reading an unsubstantiated diatribe that
starts out sort of stealth-ed as a reasonably objective article (I don’t post
this way about comments). My intention in such a case is to warn other readers
who are not interested in that sort of thing not to waste their time. The last
time I did this, I said:

"Exploitation and inequality is innate to the industrial-capitalist system; a
fact well-known at least since the time of Marx." Citation needed?

The quote was taken from an article on environment problems in India. My
problem with this is only that they said it without showing their work. If
Marx said this, cite him. If it’s “well-know” prove it. Since they don’t
bother to support this anywhere near the text of the claim, I don’t trust them
anymore. I’m out, even if I was inclined to agree with them.

I agree in general that we shouldn’t be rude or dismissive, but I think we
also need to retain the ability to call out unsubstantiated claims that
purport to be common knowledge, or are poorly attributed, and to protect our
time.

In the rare case that I regret reading something pretty long halfway through,
I sometimes quickly post this way, get down voted, and hope I saved somebody
some time. Anyone who wouldn’t read the article knowing that statement was in
it can then choose not too. I guess if this is more annoying than reading a
bad article, I could stop doing it or at least rephrase.

~~~
specialist
Rather than pedant, I'll just state I'm not buying, or state when someone's
rhetoric jumped the rails.

When I'm feeling especially snarky, I'll use lmgtfy.

------
chris_t
The unreliability of those figures will be no surprise to anyone who follows
China's economy or politics closely, and I hope this bodes for better quality
statistics in the future.

There's a small industry of people who try to measure Chinese growth in other
ways that are harder to forge such as railway shipment tonnage and energy
consumption; it'll be interesting to see to what extent those methods are
vindicated if/when better quality data becomes available.

~~~
fspeech
Chinese GDP is not a sum of locally reported GDPs. Locally reported GDPs have
always exceeded the total GDP, sometimes by a large margin. Now they may lag.

A large motivation is how the taxes collected are shared between the central
government and the local governments. A new tax sharing scheme introduced last
year makes underreporting of the local GDPs profitable for the local
governments, meaning they get to remit less taxes to the central government.

~~~
chris_t
Oh, that makes sense. I'd hoped the trend was towards a higher level of
reliability but perhaps it's just a change of direction in the manipulation.

~~~
fspeech
If you look at large companies' accounts, they typically have inter segment
reconciliations. Where intra-company trades are booked can be artificial. In
the Chinese case, the city of Tianjin, e.g., which has a financial district,
booked revenues from companies registered there but conducting no substantial
business there in its own local GDP. This is akin to the state of Delaware
including in its own GDP report (if there is such a thing) all companies
registered there. But this inflation has no effect on the national GDP, which
is aggregated over the businesses directly, so it does not matter how many
provinces claim the businesses as their own. Hope this helps put things in
context a little bit for you.

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anthonyleecook
"In Liaoning Province tax receipts and income from various fees were padded by
20-30% according to counties and cities during the period of 2011-2014. Inner
Mongolia has said that 25% of the fiscal revenue stated for 2016 were actually
fake."

That actually validates some of the slowdown that I saw while I was in China.
Business felt slow, and it seems that there wasn't the fast feel anymore
compared to 2007. Very little small company activities, and alot of economic
activities seem to involve state-owned companies (and we all know how slow
they are).

If we assume 20-30% fake data across most of its local provinces the last
couple of years, this would probably place China's GDP growth at around 1% a
year (maybe even negative), way below 7% consistently claimed by the
government. However, the 1% would be consistent with the drop in exports in
recent year.

~~~
ksec
I just wanted to add, my view is while they are not moving as fast as say 2007
or 2010. They are still fast. Certain places may not be growing as quick, but
other places like West China and Mid China are moving at super fast pace. (
That is where all the government money at the moment )

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coldcode
Eventually faking economic data has real consequences since economics
inevitably happens anyway. At some point you just look like an idiot.

~~~
anthonyleecook
Exactly! Actually this should be more of a big deal. This is a MASSIVE
accounting fraud, the kind that brought down Enron in 2000

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joelb2014
I'll be interested to see if this leads to a massive shakeup in local politics
from Beijing. I can't imagine they're pleased with the amount of doctored data
(unless they already knew and were using it to appear stronger on a global
scale)

~~~
nerbert
When I read the title, I immediately imagined China faking growth at a global
scale and maximizing its importance. It's not the case at all:

Of the 31 provinces, direct-controlled municipalities and autonomous regions
in China, three have already admitted falsifying certain economic data.
Starting with the northeastern province of Liaoning in January 2017, the Inner
Mongolia Autonomous Region and the city of Tianjin have said their statistics
were wrong.

Of the three, only Tianjing has admitted doctoring the overall provincial
gross domestic product figures. Liaoning and Inner Mongolia had padded
something else: their fiscal revenues.

~~~
joelb2014
I had thought the same but I'm still wondering if it was a proxy to cover
something else (ex. ability to pay debt obligations) that would have had
ramifications in the global market

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imron
Government bureaucrats were promoted based on GDP and tax revenue, and I for
one am shocked, _shocked_ , that this led to inflated GDP and tax revenue
figures!

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cscurmudgeon
This is what happens when you trust but _don 't_ verify on a global scale.

------
enraged_camel
Should we continue to trust the Chinese government when they report
improvements in other areas such as green energy and clean air? How can we
know those numbers aren’t doctored like these ones were?

~~~
anthonyleecook
actually you are correct; local governments in China have been known to fake
air data

[https://medium.com/@shanghaiist/officials-use-mist-cannon-
to...](https://medium.com/@shanghaiist/officials-use-mist-cannon-to-fake-air-
quality-data-end-up-freezing-building-31f2404e2b70)

and this year, Shanghai's air pollution has been worse than Beijing. Some say
due to the cold air pushing the pollution down this year.

[https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/02/12/shanghai-air-
pol...](https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/02/12/shanghai-air-pollution-
worse-beijing/)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Beijing actually made huge improvements using drastic methods to eliminate
coal consumption in the rural regions surrounding Beijing. This has made
heating a bit bothersome (some poorer or colder villagers, natural gas
shortages), but has improved air quality substantially.

~~~
anthonyleecook
Beijing’s air is better because that’s where the emperor is ;). (Or what my
Chinese friends call him, Xi baozi - xi dumpling)

~~~
seanmcdirmid
That was not true for a really long time though, Beijing was still pretty bad
even last year. Mr. 11 can always just go off to his villa somewhere else
anyways.

------
thisisit
And what happens if people are actually faking (lying) about reporting fake
data?

If these government official were lying, giving them incentives to admit they
are lying is the worst outcome I can think of.

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tootie
If this works, then it's a great move by Xi. Pay down that fake data debt in a
controlled way instead of waiting for an implosion.

------
gourou
More details about their economic data

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/business/china-gdp-
econom...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/18/business/china-gdp-economy-
growth.html)

------
arisAlexis
that's why there is a solid case for government blockchain usage

------
jensv
实践是检验真理的唯一标准，自冷战结束以来，世界上只有中国在经济规模上，缩小了和美国的差距。

Practice is the only criterion for the test of truth, and since the end of the
cold war, only china has been able to narrow the gap between the United States
and the United States

~~~
jacquesm
According to GT that reads:

"Practice is the sole criterion for testing truth. Since the end of the Cold
War, only China has narrowed its gap with the United States in terms of
economic scale."

