Chinese official apologizes for bad data

A China customs official released a statement Thursday expressing “deep apologies” for citing unconfirmed investment data from unidentified online sources, Bloomberg reported. The head of statistics at Beijing’s General Administration of Customs, Zheng Yuesheng, said he gave “groundless” and “incorrect” figures at a briefing one day earlier. Zheng had erroneously said that the National Development and Reform Commission had approved RMB7 trillion in investment projects. Zheng gave the figure to illustrate first-quarter trade growth and economic recovery. In Zheng’s Thursday apology, he also acknowledged that the practice of making false trade declarations does exist, which has some concerned trade data is overstated, and is being investigated.