The NBS says that any officials caught committing data fraud "will be found, investigated and dealt with, and will not be tolerated". Adding that "statistical fraud is the biggest corruption in the field of statistics, which seriously violates the law and affects the quality of the data, obstructing and even misleading macro decision-making".
For me, this just reads as yet another excuse as Beijing is looking for more scapegoats amid the growing backlash surrounding their approach on the Chinese economy. It isn't so much so as the statistics that are the ones misleading politicians as the other way around. When the biggest names in the hierarchy are spouting numbers as they please, we all know that the statisticians in China have little choice but to find some workaround to fit that narrative. Otherwise, there will be hell to pay if the numbers don't tally with the story.
