How reliable are China’s official statistics?

There’s long been suspicion about the validity of official data released by Chinese government agencies. Critics have accused agencies of inflating numbers in order to get results that fit with the government’s political agenda. The reliability of official Chinese statistics has come into question once again after government agencies released data in July, that just didn’t quite add up. The agencies explained it was because of changes to their methodologies, but it drew criticism from economists and analysts who said doing so not only made it difficult to do their jobs, but also to trust the data.