Juking the Stats? Authoritarian Information Problems in China

Abstract

Economic statistics inform citizens of general conditions, while central leaders use them to evaluate local officials. Are economic data systematically manipulated? After establishing discrepancies in economic data series cross-nationally, this article examines Chinese sub-national growth data. It leverages variation in the likelihood of manipulation over two dimensions, arguing that politically sensitive data are more likely to be manipulated at politically sensitive times. Gross domestic product (GDP) releases generate headlines, while highly correlated electricity production and consumption data are relatively unnoticed. In Chinese provinces, the difference between GDP and electricity growth increases in years with leadership turnover, which is consistent with juking the stats for political reasons. The analysis points to the political role of information and the limits of nonelectoral accountability mechanisms in authoritarian regimes.

Performance Feedback, Government Goal‐setting and Aspiration Level Adaptation: Evidence From Chinese Provinces

“…The cascading of performance goals in the five‐tier system means that every level below may radically exceed their superiors' goals, which partially explains the origin of the disastrous famine in the Great Leap Forward (1959–61) (Kung and Chen ). The pervasive target regimes also elicit gaming (Bevan and Hood ), data manipulation (Wallace ), and other behavioural distortions (Li ). The findings of this study suggest that public managers should pay attention to overheating in goal‐setting, which may be harmful to healthy and sustainable bureaucratic operation.…”

Doing things with numbers: Chinese approaches to the Anthropocene

“…The reason is easy to understand: In the past, GDP data were used to assess cadres' contribution to GDP growth at the local level; in the future, Green GDP data will be used to assess cadres' compliance with environmental laws and policies. As this assessment was and will be related to their personal career development, there is reason to believe that Green GDP data will be distorted at least by some people the way production data were distorted in the past (Wallace 2016).…”

Nothing to hide: Commitment to, compliance with, and impact of the special data dissemination standard

“…In their investigation of transparency based on regime type, Hollyer et al. (), articulate the reasons why the absence of electoral politics creates incentives to hide or manipulate policy‐relevant data that would harm the narrative of the regime, and Wallace's () work show why and how autocracy will manipulate economic statistics for political reasons. Thus, it is reasonable to posit that, for autocracies, the material benefits from joining the SDDS are unlikely to offset the expected costs of transparency.…”