China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Thursday announced it had uncovered a serious case involving the faking of economic data by a county government in southwest China's Yunnan Province.
According to the NBS's publicized report, the government of Luliang had coerced local companies to report inflated industrial output value, resulting in artificially high economic figures.
Twenty-eight sampled local companies reported a total of 6.34 billion yuan (1.03 billion U.S. dollars) in industrial output value in 2012; however, the actual value was only 2.82 billion yuan, based on initial calculation, according to the report.
Similarly, 25 sampled local companies reported 2.74 billion yuan of industrial output value in the first half of 2013, but the NBS initially verified the actual value to be only 1.06 billion yuan.
Meanwhile, the county was also found to have faked investment data.
