The Chinese communist regime’s National Bureau of Statistics announced last week that the country’s GDP grew by 5.2 percent last year, in stark contrast to the sluggish Chinese economy. The ruling Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) official media also claimed that 12 provinces had local GDPs above the national average.
However, the CCP’s data has been questioned by the outside world. Experts warn that the exaggerated local GDP rates and overstated growth will accelerate the collapse of the CCP’s credibility and foreign capital withdrawal from China.
The CCP’s draconian zero-COVID policy and measures in the past three years brought severe damage to China’s economy and people’s livelihood.
The Chinese economy continued slumping after the regime suddenly lifted all COVID-19 control measures in December 2022, as its economic pillars—export, consumption, and investment—have all slowed down. Foreign investment in China has declined, and the Chinese stock market has continued to plummet. Meanwhile, the youth unemployment rate has kept hitting record highs. After it hit a new high of 21.3 percent in June last year, the authorities simply stopped releasing the data. The statistics bureau only restarted releasing the youth unemployment rate this January, reporting 14.9 percent using a different standard that was seriously questioned by the public and the outside world.
Following the announcement of the 5.2 percent national GDP growth rate by the authorities, Chinese media The Paper reported on Jan. 23 that local economic data for 2023 has been released for 21 provinces and direct-administered cities among the total of 32, claiming that the GDP growth rate of 12 of them outperformed the national average.
The 12 provinces where GDP growth rates in 2023 were reportedly above the national average are: Hainan (9.2 percent), Inner Mongolia (7.3 percent), Gansu (6.4 percent), Jilin (6.3 percent), Chongqing (6.1 percent), Shandong (6.0 percent), Zhejiang (6.0 percent), Sichuan (6.0 percent), Jiangsu (5.8 percent), Anhui (5.8 percent), Hebei (5.5 percent), and Liaoning (5.3 percent), while Beijing (5.2 percent) is the same as the national average.
The Chinese public questioned the official numbers on Chinese social media platform Weibo. One said in a post: “To educate everyone, the actual GDP data will not be available until at least March. Now what we are looking at are the estimated numbers! Some are estimates, and some areas data only include January to November last year.”
Another said: “Then why am I still so poor? Western Guangdong and northern Guangdong are extremely poor.”
Reminiscent of ‘Great Leap Forward’
Taiwanese macroeconomist Henry Wu told The Epoch Times that local data should become available before national data. “But now the central government has set the GDP growth rate for last year at 5.2 percent, and then local governments have to find ways to come up with this data, so that the Bureau of Statistics can make the data consistent with the target.“It was like the boasting and exaggeration trend back then. Local governments reported ‘satellite reports’ and made the data beautiful according to the requirements of their superiors. So this data has no value for analysis.”
During the “Great Leap Forward,” a campaign launched by then CCP leader Mao Zedong in 1957 aiming to surpass the West in agriculture and industrial capacity within 3 to 5 years, local CCP authorities across the country had to massively falsify data to unrealistic level to meet the goals, which was called “launching satellites.” The campaign was a huge disaster, and nearly destroyed the nation’s agriculture and economy, leading to the 3 years great famine that starved 30 million Chinese to death from 1959 to 1961.
Liang Shaohua, the former chief compliance officer of China Asset Management Corporation, also saw the similarity. He told The Epoch Times: “The CCP keeps asking the media to speak positively about China’s economy and cannot say negative things about it. This shows that the economy is very bad and does not allow people to tell the actual situation. Now that the authorities are putting out these high-growth data, few people believe it. This also brings back the collective historical memories of decades ago when the CCP was pushing for ‘surpassing the British and the Americans in 3 to 5 years’ causing local officials to falsely report the harvest of tens of thousands of kilograms of grain in 1 mu [0.165 acres].”
Mr. Liang said: “In 2023, China’s entire economy was slumping, the stock market also reached a new low, and exports, real estate, and manufacturing industries didn’t improve. Now it is said that there has been a big development, which doesn’t make any sense.”
According to data from the International Monetary Fund, China’s local debt reached 92 trillion yuan ($12.6 trillion) in 2022, accounting for 76 percent of China’s economic output, jumped from 62.2 percent in 2019.
Mr. Wu said that China is now facing a series of crises: a real estate crisis, a debt crisis, and a crisis of confidence, which has eventually formed a capital outflow crisis and an unemployment crisis. “In order to attract foreign funds, the authorities lied to the international community that China’s economy was still good, so they made up an unbelievable economic growth rate of 5.2 percent.”
Mr. Wu pointed out that it will lead to severe consequences for the CCP. “First, the credibility of the CCP will collapse, and people will no longer believe in official data. This is an immediate effect. Second, because reliable official data cannot be found, it is difficult for foreign investment institutions to objectively judge China’s economic prospects. As China’s business environment deteriorates, outside funds will no longer come in.”
Mr. Liang said that the CCP wants to use pretty data to attract foreign capital, “but investors are smart, and the risks of investing in China are constantly rising. Foreign businessmen will not invest just because Li Qiang called on them to invest.”
At the end of last year, the CCP included “statistical falsification” in the Party’s discipline regulations. Mr. Liang said that the CCP stipulates that fraud is not allowed and that fraud must be punished, “but it must still serve the so-called political overall situation. Now the overall situation of the CCP is to have an economy that looks good and to show economic growth, so other things become unimportant.”
