China Finds False Economic Reports

After years of falsifying economic figures, officials in China's industrial northeast provinces are admitting to the practice to make the case that deep declines are not as bad as they seem now. In a Dec. 11 report, the official Xinhua news agency cited rampant fabrication of economic data in the northeast provinces of Liaoning, Heilongjiang, and Jilin in past years, with some counties claiming gross domestic product (GDP) higher than that of Hong Kong. Reports of economic data ranging from GDP to investment and household income were all routinely inflated, according to the officials. Read more