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The Chinese government announced Wednesday that it had sealed a pact with the United Nations (UN) to offer four million U.S. dollars to set up a fund, a move to help China and other Asian countries improve the quality of statistics reporting.
China will pour 800,000 U.S. dollars to the fund in each of the next five years for seminars, technical consultancy, personnel exchanges and visits, according to the pact.
Sha Zukang, under-secretary-general of the UN, said the move would help improve quality and the credibility of official statistics of Asian countries.
Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, echoed Sha, saying China would use the fund as a platform to learn from the international practice of collecting data.
To curb statistics cheating and gain credibility, the Chinese government kicked off new rules on May 1 to impose penalties for publication of fraudulent statistics or unauthorized dissemination of statistical data.
The government also revised the Law on Statistics in June, which was enacted in 1983, to prevent the falsification of official data. The revised law will take effect on Jan. 1, 2010. |
