China will investigate and punish officials for falsifying economic data, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced on Monday, amid skepticism about the accuracy of Chinese data, Reuters and Agerpres reported.

Falsification of economic data or interference by officials in statistical activities continues in China, despite the government’s efforts in recent years to improve the quality of statistics, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement.

“The falsification of statistical data is the most serious corruption in the field of statistics, which seriously violates the law, affects the quality of statistical data, hinders and even misleads macro-decision-making,” the senior official was quoted as saying in an unnamed press release.

The comments followed new disciplinary rules introduced by the Communist Party, which include issuing warnings and even expelling officials responsible for falsifying data. There have long been doubts about the accuracy of China’s data, particularly as the government tries to allay market concerns about a prolonged slowdown in the world’s second-largest economy.

China’s economy is set to grow 5.2% in 2023, meeting its official growth target, but analysts expect a slowdown this year amid a housing crisis, a build-up of local debt and lingering risks of deflation.

China says it won’t tamper with economic data, but ‘changes methodology’ for sensitive data

However, the pledge, made on Monday by the National Bureau of Statistics in Beijing, comes after it announced last August that it would stop publishing official unemployment figures for 16- to 24-year-olds.

Fu Linghui, a spokesman for the NBS, said at the time that the current methodology for calculating the figure “needs improvement” and that the number of students in this age group has increased in recent years and their main focus is on studying rather than looking for work.

“People have different opinions about whether to include students looking for work before graduation” in the metric, Linghui justified, adding that “further research” is needed on the matter. The decision came after data released by the NBS showed that between April and June last year, youth unemployment in the relevant age category rose to 20.4%, 20.8% and 21.3% respectively.

In July 2023, a Chinese economics professor suggested in an article published by the authoritative financial magazine Caixin that China’s real youth unemployment rate was 46.5% in March, while official data published by the NBS claimed it was only 19.7 %.

Professor Zhang Dandan said that if the NBS had included young people who had given up looking for work (the “Tang Ping” movement) and those who were dependent on their parents in the calculation, it would have reached its estimated figure.

The paper, published by Zhang, an associate professor of economics at China’s National Development School, was retracted shortly after it appeared in an economic journal.

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