Occasionally, I wish I commented often enough to get downvote privileges.
Are you trying to say that China doesn't fabricate and lie about their metrics and collection methodology? because I hate to be the one to break this to you, it does and there's a lot of news coverage on it going back over a decade.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/economic-indicators/article/324...
https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mje/2023/05/01/why-the-world-is-...
https://dialogo-americas.com/articles/china-withholds-manipu...
"reported by the state-run People’s Daily newspaper"
This sounds like a case of honesty, not the other way around.
Shame is one of the worst things for Chinese culturally.
The fact is, this is not in doubt, and it wasn't a one time thing but rather a consistent effort. Do a simple google search, look at the dates of the articles, they go back decades.
Its well established at this point that this is what one must expect with them.