[China Watch]The CCP’s Statistics Cracking Down on Counterfeiting and the Economic Crisis | Economic Data | Fraud | National Bureau of Statistics

[Epoch Times, June 2, 2022](Reported by Epoch Times reporters Ning Haizhong and Luo Ya) The CCP’s economic data fraud has long been criticized. Statistical fraud. A group of those responsible for the fraud found in the previous year were dealt with. A sacked senior official has also been charged with related crimes.

The background of this trend is that the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China is expected to be held this fall, Xi Jinping is seeking re-election, and under the policy of clearing and preventing the epidemic, China’s economy has suffered a serious downturn, and Li Keqiang has come to fight the fire. What is the political purpose of the so-called “real fight against fakes”?

Xi Jinping supervises the economic crackdown?Experts: paving the way for an economic collapse

On May 30, the National Bureau of Statistics of the Communist Party of China held a video conference on “mobilization and deployment of special rectification work for the problem of statistical fraud and non-restraint”. , Instructions and Instructions for Important Speeches on Fraudulent and Fraudulent”, “Fighting Statistical Fraudulent Behaviors with Real Swords and Real Guns”, welcoming the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and so on.

Official reports indicated that Cui Peng, a member of the Standing Committee of the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, also attended the meeting.

In addition, on May 31, Zhang Jinghua, the former deputy secretary of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee of the Communist Party of China, who has been sacked, was notified of one of the charges, which was “frauding economic data for the sake of personal progress.” This is rare among officials who have been sacked in the past.

On May 30, the CCP media People’s Daily reported that 126 persons responsible for “statistical fraud” were named in Henan, Hebei, and Guizhou provinces and were notified and dealt with. Among them, the statistical illegal cases in Jiaozuo City, Henan Province were discovered by the law enforcement inspection team of the National Bureau of Statistics from July 20 to 28, 2020. Looking at the information on the official website of the National Bureau of Statistics, there has been no similar notification of data fraud handling in the past two years.

Taiwan’s general economist Wu Jialong told The Epoch Times on June 2 that the Beijing authorities are now coming out to tell everyone that our economy is no longer viable. The data is not so good, the previous data is fake, that’s what it means.”

Wu Jialong said that the CCP has created a big problem with its own falsification. It should be covered up first, and it cannot be covered up any longer. Now I can only find someone to take the blame. Looking for someone to take the blame, first find the Bureau of Statistics, and then the Bureau of Statistics will push it to the locality. But when he talks about skills, he has to make arrangements first.

“The economy has a crisis of collapse, a crisis of collapse. Now we must start to take out bad data. But I was afraid that everyone would be scared, so I started to tell everyone that there were problems with the previous statistics. I also said that this year’s (economic growth) The target is 5.5 percent, and then someone said that the target is 4.5 percent now, and what he wants to say now is that we are actually negative. It could have been negative 5 percent, 6 percent, he told You, we are now at minus one percent. Now we have to start telling everyone that the situation is very bad, worse than you think. So we must first pass some of the responsibility to the statistics department, start laying out, and prepare to let everyone know the actual economic situation very bad.”

He said that this trick is to kill the donkey, and that the Bureau of Statistics is messing with it, and the local government is messing about it. When the time comes, it is said that our situation is not so good. At the beginning, someone was faking it, and now we will start telling the people.

“Because many people are unemployed, small and medium-sized enterprises have gone bankrupt. Now all aspects are attacking private enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises, how can the economy be good? From the local government to the financial department, there is a lot of data, but (China) itself claims to be the second Big economy.” Wu Jialong said.

Dong Guangping, a former mainland public security and current affairs observer, told The Epoch Times on June 1 that Xi Jinping wants to crack down on fake data because the fake data gave him a false impression. In fact, there is a big problem in the economy. on the level numbers. “The statistical data has also caused a lot of misleading for the above to formulate policies. So Xi Jinping went abroad to spend money everywhere, and he also based on that data.”

“Xi Jinping can’t make statistics by himself, and he can’t take the responsibility for falsification. He must catch someone who cheats. Xi Jinping is under great pressure now, and the economy has become like this, and he is pursuing economic responsibility. Then Xi Jinping will definitely Find a scapegoat.” Dong Guangping said.

However, Tang Jingyuan, a self-media person, analyzed in the video program that the data provided by the National Bureau of Statistics of the State Council made people cry without tears. When the whole world is concerned about how bad China’s economy is, it suddenly has to crack down on statistical fraud. Behind it may be the operation of Li Keqiang, who controls the Bureau of Statistics, and there is a little bit of a bad signal for Xi Jinping, who insists on clearing and unswerving.

Economic data under the zero-clearing policy “reveals its feet”

The CCP has taken strict measures to clear and control the new crown epidemic, which has caused a serious impact on the Chinese economy. The recent official economic data release is very bad. On May 16, the National Bureau of Statistics of the Communist Party of China announced that the total retail sales of consumer goods in April was 2.94 trillion yuan (RMB), down 11.1% year-on-year, the lowest since March 2020. The value added of industrial enterprises above designated size fell 2.9% year-on-year in April, far below the expected increase of 0.5%. In April, the national urban survey unemployment rate was 6.1%, the highest since February 2020. The youth unemployment rate is 18.2%.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang set an annual economic growth target of around 5.5% in his “Government Work Report” in March this year. But now JPMorgan and UBS have lowered their forecasts for China’s economic growth to around 3%, and Bloomberg even forecasts GDP growth of just 2% this year.

On May 25, Li Keqiang urgently convened a meeting of about 100,000 officials at all levels across the country to “stabilize the economic market.” The official media’s report of the meeting admitted: “In March, especially since April, indicators such as employment, industrial production, electricity consumption and freight have fallen significantly, and the difficulties are in some respects and to a certain extent greater than when the epidemic was severely impacted in 2020.”

Wu Jialong said that the fraudulent economic data of the CCP could be covered up in a so-so way in the past. Now, after the dynamic reset, even Shanghai has been closed for two months. He wanted to tell others that he had institutional advantages, but he paid a heavy price.

Jin Qiu, a senior media person in mainland China, also told The Epoch Times on June 1: Under the CCP’s party-state system, for political achievements, local officials engaged in data falsification, injected water into GDP, and then got promoted by doing whatever they wanted. But now during the epidemic, the statistics are too different from everyone’s feelings.

Dong Guangping said that Li Keqiang himself did not believe in the statistics of the Bureau of Statistics, so there was a “Keqiang Index” in the early years.

The “Keqiang Index” is an attempt by Li Keqiang to use several economic indicators that are relatively less affected by political factors when he was in office in Liaoning, namely electricity consumption, railway freight volume and the number of bank loans, to judge the real trend of Liaoning’s economy. But after Li Keqiang entered Zhongnanhai, the “Keqiang Index” disappeared.

A transcript of a recent meeting of 100,000 people convened by Li Keqiang circulated on WeChat. Li Keqiang reiterated the “Keqiang Index” in his speech, saying that from the beginning of May to the 20th, “both power generation, transportation and new loans were negative.” The Xinhua news agency also roughly reported the index: “Indices such as employment, industrial production, electricity consumption and freight have fallen significantly.”

“The economy was originally managed by the State Council, but Xi Jinping is the director of the Central Deep Reform Commission and the leader of the Central Finance and Economics Leading Group. He has seized all economic power by himself, and will not let Li Keqiang manage it. I started to ask Li Keqiang to come out to put out the fire, and put the power back to Li Keqiang.” Dong Guangping said.

Is the CCP’s economic data fraud a conspiracy?

In fact, the CCP’s economic statistics are falsified, and the extent of the falsification has long aroused the resentment of senior officials in the system and openly questioned them.

On December 11 last year, Han Wenxiu, deputy director of the Office of the Financial and Economic Commission of the Communist Party of China, said at a meeting that the Chinese economy is facing triple pressures of shrinking demand, supply shocks, and weakening expectations. However, former Finance Minister Lou Jiwei who attended the meeting bluntly said that none of these appeared in the statistical indicators, and the disclosed indicators were all “very good”, which did not reflect the downside risks of the economy at all.

On March 10, 2019, Yin Zhongqing, deputy director of the Finance and Economics Committee of the National People’s Congress of the Communist Party of China, publicly admitted at a press conference that China’s total local GDP is greater than the national accounting, and there has been a “data fight”. He also accused the local government of engaging in comparisons, competing for positions, falsification at the source, and serious problems such as false reporting, concealment, omission, and re-reporting, which caused statistical data to fail to reflect the real situation.

However, Xie Tian, ​​a professor at the University of South Carolina who has long been concerned about China’s economic data fraud, told Radio Free Asia at the time that the problem of China’s data fraud has a long history, and the problem stems from the central government rather than the local government: “It is unfair to place the responsibility on the local government. , is actually encouraged and promoted by superiors.”

Wang Ji (pseudonym), an industry insider who helps companies do accounting in Beijing, told The Epoch Times that the CCP’s fraud is a long-term thing. I have no choice but to cheat. The more I write the data, the better. So the data received by the Bureau of Statistics has a lot of water in it.”

Wang Ji believes that now the official said to fight against counterfeiting real knives and real guns. But the upper levels themselves are also falsifying, and he himself is very aware of how much water is there. Instead, he suddenly emphasized this matter very much, and there must be some reason behind it.

Statistical anti-counterfeiting ending

Wu Jialong told The Epoch Times that the CCP’s campaign to crack down on counterfeiting statistics cannot solve the problem.

“The reason for the bad economy is fundamental. The most important thing is that Xi Jinping screwed up the US-China relationship, and all kinds of problems have arisen. Because he believes that the east is rising and the west is falling, that there are institutional advantages, and that Western countries can’t do it. He has applied the One Belt One Road approach to the American media, Wall Street, congressional think tanks, and universities. The CCP has carried out red infiltration into the United States. He thought that he could control the interior of the United States, the United States was declining, and China was growing stronger. Yes. Then of course a lot of problems will come out later.”

Wu Jialong said that after the anti-counterfeiting was ineffective, because of the financial problems of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, there was no way to transfer the payment to the local government, and the local government had to find a way by itself. If it continues to evolve in the future, it will be the local separatist regime at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union is also because the central finance cannot sustain it.

Responsible editor: Sun Yun#