习近平强化经济数据审查，打压不利评论

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黄安伟 and Neil Gough, 习近平强化经济数据审查，打压不利评论. 纽约时报中文网, Feb 26, 2016
cn.nytimes.com/business/20160225/c25chinacrackdown/

, which is translated from

Edward Wong and Neil Gough, China Boldly Tries to Steer Economic Narrative; Data that was once made public is suddenly nowhere to be found. New York Times, Feb 26, 2016 (front page).

QuoteL

(a) "As financial and economic troubles threaten to undermine confidence in the Communist Party, Beijing is tightening the flow of economic data and even criminalizing commentary that officials believe could hurt stocks or the currency.

"The effort to control the economic narrative plays into a wide-reaching strategy by President Xi Jinping to solidify support at a time when doubts are swirling about his ability to manage the tumult.

(b) "The party’s attitude has raised further questions among executives and economists over whether Chinese policy makers know how to manage a quasi-market economy.

(c) "Ms [Anne] Stevenson-Yang, [co-founder] of J Capital Research, said she and her colleagues had seen growing discrepancies in official data in the last two years in a variety of sectors, including retail, shipping and steel production. She said a colleague had once called a Chinese cement factory to ask for production data, and a factory employee had thought the researcher was calling from a government-affiliated research association. The employee told the researcher that the factory had already changed its numbers twice and would rather not do it again, so the researcher could choose any number that fit.

“When you go around and meet state-owned industry people, everybody laughs at the national statistics, so I don’t know why foreigners believe them,” Ms. Stevenson-Yang said.

(d) "Capital Economics, a London research firm * * * does its own growth-rate estimate for China's gross domestic product, which it put at 4.3 percent last year.


Note: J Capital Research
https://www.jcapitalresearch.com/2001325991.html
("美奇金（北京）投资咨询有限公司成立于2010年，总部设在香港，北京、上海、纽约、悉尼分别设有办事处")