Letters and Blogs

Statistics make NBS chief blush

Ma Jiantang, head of National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), remarked in a recent talk show that he blushed at a netizens' query on the growth rate of urban wages. Out of the 240 million urban workers, only 130 million, or 40 percent of the total, have been included in the statistics. The reason for the gap between statistics and people's expectations comes from the mismatch between the survey's results and reality.

As the legacy of a planned economy, the survey only includes employees in the public sector and State-owned enterprises. Now, there has been an increasing number of private enterprises, and hence the statistics should include more workers from the private sector, too.