China must fight data fraud and improve the quality of its economic data, said Ning Jizhe, the head of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Ning is the second central government official over the past week to comment on the accuracy of economic data.
There has long been skepticism about the reliability of Chinese data, especially as the government has sought to reduce expectations of a protracted slowdown in the world's second-largest economy. Ning's comments echoed Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli's call last week to improve the quality and reliability of economic data and to recognize the "great harm" of fraudulent statistics.
"Make great efforts to speed up the establishment of a comprehensive, traceable, and accountable system for preventing and punishing data fraud," Ning told a meeting of NBS officials on Saturday. The comments were published Monday on the NBS website.
