Book your ticket to happiness with Sun Express Airlines. This is a

is CBS I on the world with John Bachelor. Here's John Bachelor.

Welcome in Gordon Chang at Gordon G Chang, my colleague and co-host, we look at China's budget, its

presentation to the Chinese Communist Party within these last hours at the great hall of the

people in Beijing.

The Wall Street Journal headline by Greg Epp gives the game away.

Why you shouldn't trust Chinese growth data? Subhead anomalies in China's official statistics

suggest GDP grew less last year than Beijing claims. Gordon that's a very

polite way of saying these numbers are no good.

Have they always been no good or is this a fresh development, Gordon?

Good evening to you.

Good evening, John.

China's numbers have never been reliable.

Part of it is because it's a developing economy, moving fast,

it's sometimes very hard to capture output.

But there has always been an element of deliberate fibbing.

However, for this century, the new development really is that the fibbing has now gone crazy.

And in the past, you could almost sort of say, well, I understand the trend. Right now, we are seeing numbers that have no relationship to reality. They claim 5.2% growth last year.

Maybe they had a point in a half, maybe zero.

Who knows?

But the gap is much too big for the international markets to accept.

Do they know, Gordon, or are they helpless like we are to know what the facts are?

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