China's GDP growth pace was inflated for nine years, study finds

China's GDP has long been criticised for either over- or under-estimating growth, or for smoothing out the fluctuations in real economic activities.

China over-reported its economic growth between 2008 and 2016 by an average of 1.7 percentage points, according to a recent study by researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Chicago.

The discrepancy came from local governments who are rewarded for meeting growth and investment targets, the authors say in a draft paper published by the Brookings Institution. The Beijing-based National Bureau of Statistics, knowing such manipulation well, has been adjusting the local numbers but hasn’t done so sufficiently since 2008, authors Wei Chen, Xilu Chen, Chang-Tai Hsieh and Zheng Song wrote.

“Local statistics increasingly misrepresent the true