China's GDP Figures in Doubt
BENGBU, China — On a gray Friday morning in February, Liu Min quietly went up to the ninth floor of an atrium building here, climbed over a 4-foot railing and plunged to his death onto the marble floor below.
The suicide might have drawn little attention, especially in one of China's poorer provinces, except that it happened in Bengbu's municipal government building and that the dead man was chief of the city's statistics bureau.
His neighbors and others in Bengbu suspect that the 48-year-old Liu, who left behind a wife and son, faced intense pressure as the person in charge of generating economic growth data. Just weeks before Liu's death, city officials proclaimed a stunning 16.5% increase in gross domestic product for 2004 -- nearly triple the GDP increase of the year before.
Although authorities have said little publicly about Liu's suicide, the incident has cast a spotlight on what has been a long-standing problem in China: an obsession with GDP growth.
Economic progress has been a top priority for Beijing. But it has been more like a religion in many regions, whose officials have gained recognition and won promotions based on achieving top GDP growth rates. The upshot is that for years, many provinces, counties and cities have submitted fraudulently inflated statistics.
Last year was no exception. Although China posted a sizzling growth rate of 9.5%, nearly all of the major regions reported GDP increases that were even higher. Based on these local reports, China's top government statistician said, the country's GDP growth for last year should have been as much as 15.5%.
This charade was tolerated in the past. But more recently, it has become an embarrassment to the central government as foreign investors and analysts, among others, have come to question the credibility of China's statistics. In the annual legislative session that opened last week, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao openly criticized the "blind competition" among local governments to post high GDP growth rates.
Beijing has vowed to crack down on the fabrication of economic data and has urged local governments to reconsider how officials are promoted.
Yet that won't be easy to do, underscoring China's rocky transition to a market economy.
For one thing, economists say, it's hard to judge who's telling the truth.
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- China Nearly Doubles Its Growth Tally Dec 20, 2005
- China's GDP Grows 9.4% in 3rd Quarter Oct 20, 2005
