BLOW FOR BEIJING
Audit finds Chinese provinces faked data
China’s national audit office reveals widespread data tampering, including inflated revenues, by local governments
Beijing — China found some local governments inflated revenue levels and raised debt illegally in a nationwide audit, a setback for Beijing in its bid to boost the credibility of economic data after a run of scandals. Ten cities, counties or districts in the Yunnan, Hunan and Jilin provinces, as well as the southwestern city of Chongqing, inflated fiscal revenues by 1.55-billion yuan ($234m), China’s national audit office said. Of that, 1.24-billion yuan was from the Wangcheng district in the provincial capital of Hunan, where officials faked the ownership transfer of local government buildings to boost income. The inspection, which covered the third quarter, also found that five cities or counties in the Jiangxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Hunan and Hainan provinces raised about 6.43-billion yuan in debts by violating rules, such as offering commitment letters. The findings are a blow to China’s bid to rein in data fraud, which has been widespread in some of the poorer provinces where officia...
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