<story><title>Chinese local governments rush to admit fake data</title><url>https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Chinese-local-governments-rush-to-admit-fake-data</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Bucephalus355</author><text>China has a long history of doing this.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;#x2F; prove who is using what &amp;#x2F; 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.</text></comment>
<story><title>Chinese local governments rush to admit fake data</title><url>https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Chinese-local-governments-rush-to-admit-fake-data</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>anthonyleecook</author><text>&amp;quot;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.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;That actually validates some of the slowdown that I saw while I was in China.  Business felt slow, and it seems that there wasn&amp;#x27;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).&lt;p&gt;If we assume 20-30% fake data across most of its local provinces the last couple of years, this would probably place China&amp;#x27;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.</text></comment>