Remarkably steady growth rates for three straight quarters have raised suspicions about “data smoothing” in China, but the country doesn’t need to do that, a commentary in state-owned Xinhua news agency says.
“The reality is that the government simply has no incentive or necessity to whitewash the real economic picture,” writer Zhang Zhongkai wrote.
The opinion piece acknowledged that it was “routine” for observers to view economic data from the world’s second-largest economy with askance.
