From the Business Week Online:
Statistics could improve if Beijing’s new economic census is a success
Beijing this winter is festooned with orange banners and billboards that look like Communist agitprop. But instead of slogans exhorting hero-workers toproduce more rice or steel, the message reads: “The economic census needs your support!” Time was, China’s centrally planned economy didn’t need such a census. Planners would have been expected to know how much of everything Chinese companies were churning out. But now, China is marshaling millions of T-shirted recruits to ask business owners across the country dozens of questions about their sales, profits, and production.
