Hansen, James; Fuller, Frank H.; Hsu, Hsin-Hui

Papers and Proceedings of the 12th Federal Forecasters Conference 2002, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C, (2003): 335-343.

Data collection methods that were appropriate for China's centrally-planned economy have not evolved rapidly enough to accommodate changing economic and political incentives. Consequently, several inconsistencies have appeared in China's macroeconomic and agricultural data In this paper we briefly summarized the body of research that has developed over the last two decades to understand the nature of the data discrepancies, particularly discrepancies in GDP, cultivated area, livestock product output. Users of Chinese statistical data need to be aware of the quality issues and the impacts the discrepancies will have on their analysis and forecasts.