Comprehending Chinese government statistics is a mentally demanding task. Consider, for example, a pair of figures released this summer regarding financial misconduct. The Supreme People’s Procuratorate released a report in July, claiming that economic losses as a direct result of convicted malfeasance between 2000 and June 2005 totaled 48 billion yuan (US$5.9 billion). According to the China National Audit Office (CNAO), however, the four giant state-owned assets management companies (AMCs) have been implicated in misconduct-related plots to the tune of 71.5 billion yuan. How are we to account for the difference between the two figures?
As it turns out, the Procuratorate number only covers cases that have actually gone through judicial proceedings, while the audit report includes all suspected crimes. After the release of the muckraking audit report in late June, all the four blacklisted AMCs responded by pledging to redress the problems spotted by the auditors, while punishing those responsible. Two months later, this response looks suspiciously like lip service, as so far there has been no report of the arrest of any person in relation to the suspected AMC corruption.
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