The system (capitalist or communist) determines to a great extent all kinds of curious behavior in people.<p>Like reporting numbers.<p>In communism, people are incentivized to inflate the positive numbers and deflate the negative numbers, because the primary goal is to maintain a good and submissive relationship with the higher-up party chief. The higher-up has the same incentive before his higher-up.<p>If you fall from grace with your higher-up (by not being able to achieve the numbers planned by the party), then your career is over (and possibly that of your family and business partners too).
So you <i>have to</i> give him those numbers. If you do, he will take care of you and with time, you will grow.<p>Then there&#x27;s another property of communism: people steal.<p>Not only you have to report higher productivity than the set goal, you also have to cover up for all the stealing that took place below you and the &quot;favors&quot; you make to the higher-ups.<p>Of course this is illegal, but when people start doing this, they become partners in crime and now it&#x27;s about life an death.
Falling from grace can actually mean doing hard time in jail or even getting the capital punishment.<p>This system works well when the economy grows - the pressure to perform beyond expectations is increased with each layer of bureaucracy and is more than just about &quot;job security&quot; - it&#x27;s about survival - so people <i>have to</i> produce those numbers.. even if it means lying.<p>Of course the hard work is done by the same oppressed &quot;working class&quot; that the system was supposed to help in the first place.<p>Now, I have <i>no idea</i> what&#x27;s going on in China and if these properties apply to their particular flavor of communism, but I suspect they do, because this is how human  beings have to behave in that game to win.<p>And that means that the numbers reported by the government are probably off by quite a bit and it&#x27;s possible that even they have no idea what the real situation is.