Editorials

Give down-to-earth stats

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-03-05 07:51

Growing public doubt over last year's growth in home prices has forced National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) chief Ma Jiantang to admit to technical flaws in its current handling of processing stats, as political consultants and lawmakers gather in Beijing for annual sessions.

But the response does not go far enough to narrow the credibility gap that the country's statisticians should be held accountable for.

In spite of signs of increasing bubbles in the domestic real estate market, the NBS announced last week that housing prices in China's 70 major cities increased by only 1.5 percent year-on-year in 2009.

If China's housing prices were growing at such a mild pace during the past year, it would have muted all the rising anxieties among the public about unaffordable housing and all the endeavors the central government has made to rein in asset bubbles in the property market.

But an overwhelming majority in this country believes that there is an overheated property market that saw at least double-digit price hikes last year.

That is why more and more political consultants and lawmakers are now joining the chorus of doubts over the accuracy of this official economic data.

Granted, the NBS chief has already made a step forward by recognizing flaws in how statisticians process data. Previously, China's statisticians often defended the accuracy of their work by repeating that "it's normal for people to have doubts".

Technical flaws are indeed a problem but not the underlying cause for a widening credibility gap over official statistics. It is the lack of common sense among statisticians that really matters.

These statistics crunchers are supposed to provide critical data for policymakers and the public to make sense of social and economic situations. Lawmakers should act to make sure that statisticians never ever come up with statistics that are totally out of touch with reality.

(China Daily 03/05/2010 page9)