Watchdog calls out local authorities over fake data

Some local governments have been fabricating the number of businesses in their regions – a key indicator of economic recovery – and in one case set hard targets for towns to register fake businesses, according to the country’s top anti-corruption watchdog.

In an official notice, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) listed the targets as one of three classic examples of “formalism” that added to the burdens of grass-roots officials.

In Shanxi province, for instance, the commission said in 2022 and 2023, some counties set hard business registration targets for towns and districts. These local governments would then be evaluated annually based on the number of business entities they had added in their respective areas.

Under pressure from their superiors, the local governments “mobilised” residents to create fake business registrations, some of which would then be cancelled after the annual county evaluations, according to the notice.

In one extreme case, an individual registered more than 20 bogus businesses, the CCDI said.

The surge in business registrations came as Shanxi offered financial assistance and various marketing platforms to help business owners recover from the economic damage caused by Covid-19 and sweeping pandemic restrictions.

Last October, Shanxi provincial officials announced 68,000 new businesses had been registered in the first nine of months of 2023. The province pledged to support the “excellent trend” with further support for tourism, innovation, and rural and agricultural development.

The CCDI also cited another case of formalism in the province of Liaoning in which more than 600 libraries had been set up in rural villages. The facilities had hardly been used by the residents, most of whom were farmers.

In the city of Qiqihar in Heilongjiang province, government officials set a hard target for the number of “likes” for its social media posts from area counties and districts. Under a stipulation that at least 10 per cent of the population take part, hospitals and schools demanded that their staff document their “likes” for the posts, according to the CCDI.

“These classic examples show that some local governments still blindly set quotas with no regard for reality, which then forced grass-roots cadres to create fake data,” the CCDI said, adding “stubborn diseases of formalism and bureaucracy” should be corrected.

Several cases of data fabrication have been uncovered over the years, in which local officials tried to inflate figures to meet economic growth targets or boost their prospects for promotion. In 2022, Zhang Jinghua, a former deputy Communist Party chief in Jiangsu province, was expelled from the party after being accused of fabricating economic data.

Last year, President Xi Jinping repeatedly directed officials at all levels to conduct comprehensive “investigation and research”, echoing measures chairman Mao Zedong took in the early 1960s in the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward. Xi has urged officials to listen to the public to uncover the real sources of problems, with special attention paid to social stability, party governance and the legal system.

In January, the National Bureau of Statistics warned data fabrication was “the biggest corruption in the statistical sphere”.