Statistics bureau launches new round of inspections

The National Bureau of Statistics launched an inspection campaign among six provincial-level regions to find hidden problems in their work, the bureau said on Tuesday.

The bureau announced on its website it has dispatched six inspection teams to Shaanxi, Henan, Heilongjiang, Hebei, Hunan and Guizhou provinces, where the teams will stay for about two weeks to check local statistical work, identify problems and receive tips on data falsifying.

From 2019 to 2021, the NBS sent inspection teams to all provincial-level regions and a handful of ministries to conduct the first comprehensive inspection on statistics officials, which also included checks for other weak points, such as corruption. Seven teams also conducted "turnaround" inspections last year to re-inspect provinces to see how the work had progressed.

When heading a team in Shaanxi province, Kang Yi, head of the NBS, said the campaign will review rectification work after previous inspections as well as examine work on handling and preventing data falsification. He urged local government bureaus to shoulder their responsibility to prevent spreading false data and improving data quality.

Officials from the Central Committee for Discipline Inspection and the National Commission of Supervision, China's top anti-corruption watchdogs, are also participating in the new campaign.

In a May article on China Information News, a publication managed by the NBS, Kang said certain officials in local and grassroots positions are still judging performance merely by numbers, and sugarcoating performances by falsifying statistics.

He added some local statistics officials even acted in cahoots with them, which severely disrupted the authenticity and accuracy of statistics.