Chinese Officials Come Clean to Rigging Economic Growth Stats

You don’t say? This is especially suprising come out from Chinadaily.com. You’d think they’d refrain from casting aspersions on the great Chinese command economy, fearing the ever efficient mobile execution vans. But, no, on this day, 11 days prior to KRAMPUS, the admit to wanton fraud, manipulation, and gross misconduct that is sure to get them a medal of “honor amongst citzenry” in the ancient walled country of the orient.

Several local officials in China’s Northeast region sought to explain dramatic economic drops in their areas by admitting they had faked economic data in the past few years to show high growth when the real numbers were much lower, Xinhua News Agency reported on Friday.

“If the past data had not been inflated, the current growth figures would not show such a precipitous fall,” one official was quoted as saying.

The report cited several officials in the region who acknowledged they had significantly overstated data ranging from fiscal revenue and household income to GDP.

Three years ago Liaoning province’s GDP growth was reported at 9.5 percent, but its current figure?over the first three quarters of this year?is just 2.7 percent. Jilin’s growth was reported at 12 percent three years ago, but its current rate is 6.3 percent in the same period.

The revelation about the inflated figures came as the GDP growth of the three Northeast provinces ranked the lowest nationwide.

Guan Yingmin, an official in Heilongjiang province, said local investment figures were inflated by at least 20 percent, which translates to nearly 100 billion yuan ($15.7 billion).

If the local financial reports were true, some single counties’ GDP would have surpassed Hong Kong. An earlier audit by the National Audit Office found one county in Liaoning that reported annual fiscal revenues 127 percent higher than the actual number.

A staff member in the Jilin provincial finance department, who asked not to be identified, told China Daily that in past years, local officials competed each other to lure external investment projects. They reported the promised investment value, whether it had been achieved or not, as the investment figure.

I hope you can appreciate the gravity of this publication and know that everything we suspected out of China is true: lies and corruption, lack of growth, pure fuckery.

Dr. Copper and oil foretold this story. Now let’s see how it plays out.