China tightened its laws yesterday on manipulating data and threatened “severe punishment” for officials who alter or falsify government figures, state media reported.
An amended version of the law on statistics, which was first adopted in 1983, was passed by the standing committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s parliament, Xinhua news agency said.
The law is intended to impose stiff penalties on officials who “intervene in government statistical work and manipulate or fabricate data,” the report said, citing the text of the document.
“Officials who make willful changes or falsify statistics, ask statistical agencies to fake data or take revenge on staff who refuse to commit such acts will be punished,” it said.
No details were given of the penalties involved.
The move to punish those who alter official statistics comes after a series of scandals in China in which figures have been massaged.
Xinhua said a report to the NPC revealed how officials in southwest Chongqing had ordered statisticians to add a zero to the value of local business, boosting it to 30 million yuan (US$4.4 million) from just 3 million yuan.
Incidents such as this meant that figures provided by local authorities showed China’s GDP was 3.9 percent — 2.66 trillion yuan — higher than it actually was, Xinhua said, citing a 2005 report by the National Bureau of Statistics.
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