China's curb of data inflation favorable to high-quality development

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The Chinese economy exceeded the 6.7-percent growth target to expand 6.9 percent year-on-year in 2017, marking the first acceleration in seven years, but data inflation at lower levels has been with frequency, sounding the alarm that the pursuit for local governments to impress with large numbers, must soon come to an end.

Last week, Binhai New Area, a major economic development zone in Tianjin Municipality, and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region separately admitted double counting or data falsification.

As provincial-level legislative meetings are about to start this week, all eyes are on whether the GDP targets for the year may look less ambitious and allow for breathing space as the central government puts quality over quantity.

The audit findings in the third quarter last year showed that 10 cities and counties in Yunnan, Hunan and Jilin provinces as well as Chongqing Municipality had inflated their fiscal revenues by a total of 1.5 billion yuan.

Although the statistics bureau has said that the national economic figures were not affected by the inaccurate figures in some regions, companies and institutions as the calculation had been done through an independent survey, these cases begs the question of how incentives could be aligned to deter data fabrication.

Those who have falsified statistics will no longer get away with it as efforts are being made to unify GDP calculation at both provincial and national levels.

How provincial governments adapt to the shift in development philosophy and improve the quality of economic development is another big question to be answered at the upcoming meetings, and whether the emphasis on rigid growth figures will be replaced by more flexible indicators.

The central government is considering the establishment of new mechanisms to push forward high-quality development, including necessary indicators, policies, standards, statistical and performance assessment systems.

Related innovations could be widely discussed at the upcoming provincial legislative meetings, as almost all significant reforms China have been put on trial on a small scale at local levels.

Source(s): Xinhua News Agency