China’s economic recovery is weak. The picture shows a production line of SMC Company, a Beijing pneumatic component manufacturer, on January 10, 2023. (JADE GAO/AFP via Getty Images)
[The Epoch Times, January 24, 2024](Epoch Times reporters Ning Haizhong and Luo Ya interviewed and reported) At a time when China’s economic recovery has stalled, the National Bureau of Statistics of the Communist Party of China said that GDP grew by 5.2% last year, and the official media also claimed that local GDP was “partially “Provinces achieved breakthroughs of a new magnitude”, and “12 of the 21 provinces outperformed the country in GDP growth”. Experts describe the CCP’s various regions following the central government’s fraud as “satellites” during the “Great Leap Forward” period. However, this is a self-made bitter pill. The collapse of its own credit will accelerate the withdrawal of foreign capital.
The GDP releases of many places in mainland China have been accused of “spreading satellites”
After three years of epidemic blockade, China’s economy and people’s livelihood have been severely damaged. The CCP lifted the blockade at the end of 2022, but economic recovery has been difficult. The three locomotives of import and export, consumption and investment have slowed down. Foreign investment in China has declined, and the Chinese stock market has continued to plummet. After the youth unemployment rate hit a new high of 21.3% in June last year, the authorities simply stopped releasing data. It was only recently that the youth unemployment rate dropped to 14.9%, which was seriously questioned.
Against this background, the authorities have frequently emphasized the “brightness” of China’s economy. Chinese Premier Li Qiang announced in advance at the Davos Forum on January 16 that GDP will grow by about 5.2% in 2023. He called on the international community to expand investment in China. The National Bureau of Statistics of the Communist Party of China officially announced on the 17th that GDP growth last year was 5.2%, but it was widely questioned. According to research by Rhodium Group, China’s real GDP growth rate in 2023 may be only nearly 1.5%.
At the National Two Sessions of the Communist Party of China in March, Li Qiang will announce new national growth targets. Prior to this, two sessions have been held in local areas in recent days. The Paper reported on the 23rd that local economic data for 2023 has been released intensively. “The GDP of 21 provinces last year was released: Guangdong took the lead to exceed 13 trillion (RMB, the same below), and the growth rate of 12 provinces outperformed the country.”
It is said that in addition to Guangdong, the largest economic province, becoming the first province in the country with an annual GDP exceeding 13 trillion yuan, there are also three major economic provinces, Shandong, Zhejiang, and Sichuan, with annual GDP exceeding 9 trillion yuan and 8 trillion yuan respectively. , 6 trillion yuan. In addition, Hunan’s annual GDP exceeded 5 trillion yuan for the first time, and the annual GDP of Chongqing and Liaoning entered the “3 trillion club”, etc.
According to official media, 12 of the 21 provinces have GDP growth rates that outperform the country: Hainan (9.2%), Inner Mongolia (7.3%), Gansu (6.4%), Jilin (6.3%), Chongqing (6.1%), Shandong ( 6.0%), Zhejiang (6.0%), Sichuan (6.0%), Jiangsu (5.8%), Anhui (5.8%), Hebei (5.5%), Liaoning (5.3%), and Beijing (5.2%) are the same as the country.
Some netizens on Weibo questioned these increases: “Then why am I still so poor?” “Western Guangdong and northern Guangdong are extremely poor.” “Seeing such beautiful data is really self-praising.” “Shandong, Sichuan, Hunan Why is the GDP so high? I have been to these places and found that the local income is not high, and the development of some places is quite backward!”
Some netizens also said: “To educate everyone, the actual GDP data will not be available until at least March. Now let’s take a look at the estimated numbers~! Some areas are estimated, and some areas are only available from January to November. “
Taiwan General Economist Wu Jialong (authorized by Wu Jialong)
Taiwanese general economist Wu Jialong told The Epoch Times on January 23 that it stands to reason that local data should be available first before national data. But now the central government has set the GDP growth rate for last year at 5.2%, and then local governments have to find ways to come up with this data, so that the Bureau of Statistics can make the data consistent with the target. “It was the exaggeration style back then. Local governments reported satellite reports and made the data beautiful according to the requirements of superiors. Therefore, these data have no value for discussion.”
Exaggeration refers specifically to the trend of exaggerating performance during the “Great Leap Forward” and “Cultural Revolution” periods after the founding of the Communist Party of China. The release of satellites originally refers to false reports and exaggerated publicity of grain output, such as reporting false “wheat satellites”, “rice satellites”, “grain satellites”, “flue-cured tobacco satellites”, etc. For example, on June 8, 1958, the Chinese Communist Party’s “People’s Daily” published an exaggerated report that “the average wheat yield per 5 acres of the Satellite Agricultural Cooperative in Suiping County, Henan Province reached 2,105 kilograms”, which became the first release of the “Great Leap Forward” movement. Yield satellite. Later, similar behaviors that occurred in various industries were also called “satellite release.”
Liang Shaohua, the former chief compliance officer of China Asset Management Corporation, also told The Epoch Times on January 24 that the CCP keeps asking the media to sing good about China’s economy and cannot sing bad about it. This shows that the economy is very bad and does not allow everyone to tell the actual situation. . Now that the authorities are throwing out these high-growth data, few people believe it. This also resurfaces the collective historical memories of decades ago when the CCP competed for tens of thousands of kilograms of grain in various places, and the harvest was superb in three to five years.
Analysis: The CCP joins forces to create counterfeit goods and accelerate the withdrawal of foreign capital
Wu Jialong said that China is now facing a real estate crisis, a debt crisis, and a crisis of confidence, which will eventually form a capital outflow crisis and an unemployment crisis. In order to attract foreign funds, the authorities lied to the international community that China’s economy was still good, so they set an unbelievable economic growth rate of 5.2%, and then each place had to report how much it had. “This is called data engineering.”
He believes that the CCP’s actions will only bring bitter consequences: First, the credibility of the CCP will collapse, and people will no longer believe in official data. This is an immediate effect. Second, because reliable official data cannot be found, it is difficult for foreign-funded institutions to objectively judge China’s economic prospects. As China’s business environment deteriorates, outside funds will no longer come in.
“There is no way to have official, systematic and reliable macroeconomic data to judge the trends of China’s economy, so many foreign investors simply leave. Many investment institutions and financial institutions, such as Citibank and Blackstone Group, see that the environment is not right and leave quickly. Already.”
Liang Shaohua said that when China’s economy was facing collapse, the authorities had no better solution and wanted to give the world a good image, so they had no choice but to start with numbers and manipulate them. “In 2023, China’s entire economy will sink, the stock market will reach a new low, and exports, real estate, and manufacturing industries will not improve. Now it is said that there has been a big development, which is unreasonable.”
In fact, most of the GDP of Chinese localities with good data is still debt. According to data from the International Monetary Fund, China’s local debt will reach 92 trillion yuan in 2022, accounting for 76% of GDP, compared with 62.2% in 2019.
Liang Shaohua said that the CCP wants to use good-looking data to attract foreign capital, but capital is smart and the risks of investing in China are constantly rising. Foreign businessmen will not invest just because Li Qiang shouted.
File photo of Liang Shaohua, former chief compliance officer of China Asset Management Corporation. (Ma Shangen/The Epoch Times)
Why does the CCP still claim to crack down on statistical fraud?
It is worth noting that the Chinese Communist Party, which has always been criticized for its fraud practices, included “statistical fraud” in the CCP’s party discipline regulations at the end of last year. However, the authorities only deal with those responsible for statistical fraud within the party. Those responsible for minor cases will be warned, and for more serious cases, they will be removed from their posts or even be expelled from the party.
In this regard, Wu Jialong said that although the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China wants subordinates to falsify data, it must also arrest a few falsifying officials to prove that the data it provides is still reliable. This is the same logic as the CCP needs to use corrupt officials to do things for it, and at the same time arrests a few corrupt officials to show that it is dealing with corrupt officials.
In October last year, Sun Shutao, the former vice chairman of the Shandong Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, was “double fired”. Among the many crimes reported to him were “falsifying economic data.” Kong Lingdong, former deputy secretary of the Xining Municipal Party Committee in Qinghai Province, Luo Jianbin, former party member of the Kunming CPPCC in Yunnan Province, Zhang Jinghua, former deputy secretary of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee, and Li Jinping, director of the Shanxi Provincial Development and Reform Commission, were also reported to have engaged in “data falsification.”
Wu Jialong said that now that the central government is taking the lead in counterfeiting, and at the same time claiming to crack down on local counterfeiting, the result of this may become: in order to cope with the higher authorities, officials will fake those who should fake, and those who should embezzle will embezzle, and then a group of people will always be caught. Those who come out to be the scapegoat are usually those who are on the wrong team. Therefore, when serving as an official in China, one is always corrupt while preparing an escape route and arranging family members to live overseas as naked officials.
Liang Shaohua said that the CCP stipulates that fraud is not allowed and that fraud must be punished, but it must still be subject to the so-called political overall situation. Now the overall situation of the CCP is to have a good economy and economic growth, so other things become unimportant. In actual operation, the CCP does not explicitly say that it wants you to cheat. It just holds a baton and says, “Now you have to match whatever number I ask for.”
Wu Jialong said that in fact, the CCP not only falsified economic data, but also falsified epidemic data, and also falsified population data. “The population is not at all now 1.4 billion people. It is still talking about China’s 1.4 billion people all day long.” He said that now it is necessary to study and judge China. The economic prospects can only be cross-referenced with other data, or with rules of thumb and daily observations.
Editor in charge: Ye Ziming#
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2024-01-24 07:38:19
