China will push forward its statistics system reforms to continuously improve the nation's data quality next year.

Li Deshui, commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics, said as the country's social and economy develops more, statistical information gathering becomes an increasingly heavy task. He spoke at the annual national statistics conference held yesterday in Beijing.

Statistics departments at all levels will have to work very hard to provide accurate and reliable figures for the government and the public.

The government will conduct the first national economic census next year to better understand the situation in China, Li said.

It will also take measures to improve and regularize its estimates of local gross domestic product figures.

"We will beef up inspections to punish unlawful activities in statistical work such as fraud and deception,'' he said. "Fraud and deception are not only serious political issues, but a kind of corruption in and of themselves.''

During the past several years, statistics departments at different levels have discovered more than 10,000 illegal activities within statistics gathering annually, Li noted.

Last week, Bruce Murray, country director of the Asian Development Bank's China Resident Mission, said there is no doubt that China has made great strides in improving its national accounting estimates.

He said some recent milestones include:

L Revising upward the GDP series to better reflect the contribution of services;

L Participating the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) General Data Dissemination System;

L Deciding to produce quarterly national accounts by industry;

L Revising end of year estimates to reflect data that becomes available in the following year;

But China's statistics still suffer from a number of limitations including those related to data coverage and methodological issues, he said.

These weaknesses have led to some foreign observers questioning the accuracy and reliability of Chinese statistics, he said.

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