Asia Times
Asia Times
HONG KONG China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has with its latest release of economic data again become a target of public censure for suspected fabrication of statistics. This time, even state-run media are making high-pitched criticism, slamming "too-good-to-be-true" figures for aggravating a "crisis of confidence" in government numbers.
On July 27, the NBS said the actual per capita income of urban Chinese reached 8,856 yuan (US$1,296) on average in the first half of this year (or 1,476 yuan a month), a growth of 11.2% from a year ago. Even average cash income (excluding income in kind) of farmers jumped 8.1% to 2,733 yuan per capita in the same period.
This shows that despite a slowdown in economic growth as a result of the global financial crisis, China's citizens still managed to increase their incomes. In other words, the latest statistics suggest that average income is outgrowing the nation's economy, for according to an earlier NBS report, China's gross domestic product (GDP) grew only 7.1% in the January-June period.
The NBS income statistics were immediately rejected and ridiculed by the public. Commentaries on state-run media openly questioned their reliability, saying the figures were too good to be true, given widely reported bankruptcies and massive layoffs in the first half of this year.
"Increase in figures, decrease in income" was the title of a commentary in the Qianjiang Evening News. The income data add to public distrust of government statistics, to the extent that even state-run Xinhua News Agency opened a discussion panel on its website to let people vent their anger amid what it called "a crisis of confidence in [official] statistics".
The income data certainly seem to contradict other statistics.
An index designed by the People's Bank of China (PBoC) to measure how comfortable people feel living with their current incomes registered a negative 8.6% in the second quarter, the lowest since the index was launched in 1999. (The higher the figure, the more comfortable people feel they can live with their present incomes).
While such an index is more or less subjective, it is supported by hard data from other departments. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security said at least 20 million migrant rural workers had lost their jobs in the first half of this year, as many factories, particularly in export-oriented industries, either closed or scaled down production. The Ministry of Education said about 40% of the more than 6 million university graduates this year were still struggling to find employment.
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