Statistical cheating

With modified or even false statistics being a persistent scourge, the revised law on statistics adopted by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress at the weekend was expected to have tougher penalties against the rampant practices of keeping back, cooking up and forging statistics.

However, the new measures are far from being severe enough to suppress the urge of local government leaders to pressure their statistics departments to produce figures in their favor.

The stipulations prohibit government departments or leaders from revising in their favor the figures collected by the statistics departments and statisticians. And, it is notified as a serious violation of the law for leaders to force statisticians or the statistics departments to modify data.