Officials who fabricate or manipulate figures or take action against statisticians refusing to do so to help them could face administrative punishment and even criminal charges if a draft law amendment is passed.
The draft amendment to the Statistics Law was submitted to the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, the top legislature, for its first reading yesterday.
"Ensuring the accuracy and quality of statistics is the key problem this amendment has to deal with," Ma Jiantang, director of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), told legislators.
In recent years, about 60 percent of all statistical violations have been caused by fabrication or manipulation of figures, with officials either juggling the numbers themselves or getting someone else to do it for them, he said.
"The amendment seeks to ban any administrative intervention in statistics in order to avoid such violations."
The draft stipulates that government departments' directors cannot change figures, or ask statisticians to change or fabricate them. Nor would they be allowed to take action against statisticians for turning down their illegal demands.
"Officials doing so will receive criticism and/or punishment from supervision departments, and could even face criminal charges," the draft says.
It annuls a stipulation that allows officials to ask statisticians to change incorrect figures. "The change is meant to prevent officials from abusing this provision," Ma said.
Liu Heng, deputy director of the NBS's policy and regulation department, said many officials manipulate statistics for their personal or sectarian gains.
"In Western countries, statistics are used only for decision making. But in China, they are an important index to evaluate the performance of officials," he said.
A reference document that the NBS presented to legislators said some local governments often compete with each other on statistics.
"The more local the government is, the more difficult to ensure the truth and accuracy of figures," it said.
Correspondingly, the latest amendment spells out that any honorable title, material reward or promotion based on fabricated statistics should be withdrawn or cancelled.
It requires government departments, social institutions and enterprises to truly, accurately and actively offer statistics if required. Otherwise, they face a fine up to 200,000 yuan ($29,000).
To protect a person or entity that offers true figures, the draft bans statistical departments from leaking any information that could be used to identify the source. "This is common practice in most countries," Liu said.
"The aim of statistics is not to take action against individuals, but to get information from them to give a full picture of a country, region or industry," he said.
Legislators agreed that such changes were timely and necessary. "Weak legislation over statistics is the cause of many problems," a NPC financial and economic affairs committee document said.
The Statistics Law was passed in 1983, and was last amended in 1996, it said.
The committee suggested an additional stipulation to require statisticians to resist administrative intervention in figures, and another provision to better regulate the activities of private survey companies.
"The number of private research companies is growing rapidly in China. It's necessary to bring them under supervision to prevent them from conducting fraud in the name of statistical analysis," the document said.