Why China's figures can't be trusted

My article Why China's figures can't be trusted appeared in Mail Today/DailyO


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China could have downplayed its number of confirmed cases 'by a factor of 15 to 40 times'.

A few days ago, Boris Johnson's government was furious with China's handling of the coronavirus; some UK officials even warned that Beijing will face a 'reckoning' once the Covid-19 crisis is over. Mail on Sunday reported that scientists had warned the UK government that China could have downplayed its number of confirmed cases 'by a factor of 15 to 40 times'. At that time, China had reported some 80,000 cases of coronavirus.

Old tricks
While the US national security adviser declared that Washington had no way of knowing if Beijing's figures were accurate, US President Donald Trump said that China's coronavirus statistics seemed "a little bit on the light side".
The President's comments came after a senior Republican lawmaker cast doubt on Beijing's data and Bloomberg News spoke of a classified US intelligence report which concluded that China had under-reported the total cases and casualties due to the virus. Though he had not read the intelligence report, Trump observed: "The numbers seem to be a little bit on the light side - and I am being nice when I say that - relative to what we witnessed and what was reported." He admitted that during his recent phone call with President Xi Jinping, he discussed the spreading of the virus, "but not so much the numbers".
Today, many believe that the Covid-19 is the greatest 'natural' tragedy which has befallen China (and the world) since World War II.
However, one should never forget the Great Leap Forward (GLF), a human-made tragedy which recorded 45 million deaths in the Middle Kingdom.
The Great Famine, which followed the GLF, lasted from 1958 to 1962, and "to this day the ruling Communist Party has not fully acknowledged the degree to which it was a direct result of the forcible herding of villagers into communes under the GLF”, wrote Frank Dikötter, the author of Mao's Great Famine.
In The New York Times op-ed, Dikötter wrote: "Historians have known for some time that the GLF resulted in one of the world's worst famines. Demographers have used official census figures to estimate that 20 million to 30 million people died. …In all, the records I studied suggest that the GLF was responsible for at least 45 million deaths."

History of falsehood
In 1958, Mao Zedong had declared that China would overtake Great Britain in 15 years (later on he changed it into 2 to 3 years); the way to do was by setting up thousands of People's communes; it was to be a disastrous political project.
One of the main reasons for the failure and subsequent tragedy was the forging of the figures. In 1957, the Communist Party started to export excess foodgrain to show off to the world how great the Communist regime was; at the same time the production of grain had been quickly decreasing throughout China, due to Mao's faulty agricultural policies.
But to please the Great Helmsman and the Party, the local satraps kept increasing the figures and announced bumper crops; according to Wikipedia, "In 1960 state granaries would have 50 billion jin [traditional units of measurement] of grain, when they actually contained 12.7 billion jin. …the grain yield in Gansu declined by 4,273,000 tonnes from 1957 to 1961. This series of events resulted in the illusion of superabundance, in which the Party believed that they had an excess amount of grain they could access; but, the Party was also unaware that crop yields were in fact lower than average."

Little transparency
In October 1959, the propaganda magazine China Reconstructs showed farmers with the caption "Celebration of the 1958 bumper harvest at a people's commune in Anhui province." In 1960, other posters read: "The People's commune is good, happiness will last for ten thousand years." Falsifying the figures did not stop. 40 years later, a junior agriculture official lied to Premier Zhu Rongji about some grain harvest figures; then the honest Prime Minister realised how serious the problem of false statistics in China was.
China Youth Daily reported: "Premier Zhu inspected a grain-purchasing station in Nanling county, Anhui province and was delighted to find it full. However, China Central Television revealed that the head of the station had borrowed a substantial amount of grain from other factories ahead of the visit to convince Mr Zhu that he had fulfilled his required purchasing duties." The official had only met half the required purchase quota and had refused to buy more grain. During his tenure, Zhu tried to stop this Chinese 'disease', but never succeeded.
Still, there is no transparency in China. In 2018, Xiang Songzuo, a professor at the Renmin University School of Finance, wrote that China's GDP growth would only be 1.67% and not 6.5% as stated by Beijing. According to Chinascope website, Xiang warned, "Chinese have become addicted to playing with debt and high leverage financing. This is a mirage and will collapse." Ditto for China's Defence Budget, evaluated to be twice the official figure. There is nothing new about the forged figures in Wuhan, where the number of casualties froze after the Emperor's visit on March 10.
The question for the Communist leadership is, can China become a responsible, transparent, modern State, or does Beijing want to continue with the old ways?

China must go beyond one-party system

My article China must go beyond one-party system is posted in NitiCentral.

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In the early 1970s, the CIA published for its agents, a manual entitled: “The Art of China Watching”. At that time, the CIA wrote, “by most standards, China is a peculiar country”. Forty years later, China has not changed much; it remains difficult to grasp the moves and motives of a self-proclaimed ‘more transparent’ leadership.
For the watchers, the latest episode was enthralling to follow; I speak of the ‘public’ trial of Bo Xilai, a former Politburo member and Chongqing’s Communist Party Secretary.
Bo’s trial has been the object of immense speculation on the part of the ‘watchers’. Will it demonstrate some progress by the new leadership led by President Xi Jinping in the Art of Transparency, or will it be an old style drama à la Mao Zedong, enacted by a State which has understood the importance of using the modern means of communication such as Internet and micro-blogging. Old wine in new cyber bottles!
John Garnaut, the author of The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo wrote: “It would be a suitably jaw-dropping postscript to one of the most remarkable political shows on earth if Bo Xilai turns out to be the man who saves the Chinese legal system.”
But Bo has not really saved a system which has not witnessed major reforms and taken a step forward towards constitutionalism, the normal rule of law?
Probably not!
Garnaut explains that “as celebrity drama it doesn't get much more riveting than a fallen neo-Maoist, …brawling with his former right hand man and his current wife over infidelity, insanity, defection, a $3.2 million mansion in France, the murder of an Englishman and a ‘princeling’ child marooned in the United States.”
There is no doubt that the Intermediate People's Court in Jinan in the eastern Shandong province witnessed a historical event. All the ingredients were there: the ‘fallen’ hero, brilliantly defending himself and denouncing his wife Gu Kailai, who had ‘gone mad and always lies’; ‘sex’, with Bo stating that Gu was angry with him over an affair that the Red Prince had with another woman (Gu herself apparently had an affair with the Police Chief); but more interestingly, the relative transparency of the Court which regularly published transcripts of the proceedings. There was, of course, no way to check the veracity of the released documents as live transmission was not permitted by the Court (read the Party).
There is no doubt that the leadership has scripted the ‘show’ in detail during the previous week and the ‘transparency’ was a carefully calculated risk; knowing that it would be watched by hundreds of millions of avid spectators in the Mainland and abroad.
The Party had perhaps not planned such a spirited defence from the side of the fallen leader, but it remained within manageable limits for the new leadership. It has not always been so.
In his youth, President Xi Jinping must have heard (he was too young to remember ut ) about the fate of his father Xi Zhongxun, a vice-Premier, who during the Lushan Conference in July 1959 sided with Marshall Peng Dehuai, Mao’s old companion (more or less his equal). Peng had the courage to present a report on what was happening in the countryside; he spoke on the (today) infamous Great Leap Forward. During his inspection tour, the Old Marshal had seen peasants dying by millions. He told Mao in no uncertain terms that China was on the brink of the greatest man-made disaster; Mao never forgave Peng for having spoken against the Great Leap Forward and his lieutenant Xi Zhongxun also paid the hard price for having taken Peng’s side.
In September 1962, Mao, who had remained in the background after the Lushan Conference, decided to come back on the front stage. During the annual Plenum, he reemphasized class struggle ‘to prevent the emergence of revisionism’; denounced 'the members of the bourgeoisie right in the party ranks' and reasserted that the Great Leap Forward was the right thing for China. Peng and Xi Sr. were sent to the ‘countryside’, an euphemism for a purge at that time, without TV cameras, newspapers, micro-bloggers to report about their fate. Such were the ways of the Party during those days.
Today China has changed, though the manner in which decisions are taken by the inner core of the Party remains shrouded in absolute secrecy.
Although many ‘watchers’ believe that Bo went beyond the prepared script, Xinhua reiterated the Party’s position: “During the trial, both prosecution and defense sides had opportunities to fully express their opinions. Also, the court released trial transcripts through microblog.”
It reminded us that on April 10, 2012, Bo was suspended from the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau and the CPC Central Committee, on suspicion of serious discipline violations and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CPC filed a case for investigation.
The Party mouthpiece gave what will probably be the final verdict: “Although the country's legal system has a principle of tempering justice with mercy, a heavy sentence in line with the law should be handed to Bo, as he committed very serious crimes and refused to plead guilty. …he is not subject to any terms of leniency by law." Thus the Party has decided.
But in China everything is linked and Bo’s trial should be seen in the largest context of the continuous power struggle at the top of the Party. Soon after the trial ended, the Politburo announced the dates of the Third Plenum of the Central Committee in November, during which the ‘deepening of the reforms’ will be discussed. Bo Xilai who represented the ‘leftist’ wing of the Party, is now out of the game.
Observers believe that the Third Plenum should give some clear indications about the leadership's new economic agenda and if deeper ‘political’ reforms can be envisaged in the near future; they are badly needed to tackle the difficult challenges facing the country, such as corruption, polluted environment, regional economic imbalance or the restive ethnic provinces.
But by most standards, China remains a peculiar country and India is still far ahead in the field of rule of law and transparent governance, even if rampant corruption and other problems cannot be denied.
To become ‘normal’, China needs to go beyond a one party system.