In March, at the National People’s Congress, Beijing set its annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth target. Since 1985, in every year but one, China has met or exceeded its official projections, raising doubts about whether or not Beijing’s claims of rapid growth can be believed. The New York Federal Reserve issued a report in 2020 that challenged the numbers, saying that China’s GDP growth chart was too smooth for the data to be authentic.
Typical of a communist system, the central government’s growth target is divided up and assigned as quotas for provincial governments, who in turn set quotas for local governments, and so on down the line. Politicians who fail to meet quotas can expect negative consequences so they are incentivized to lie, pumping up the numbers. The reports are
2023-11-25