Earlier, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection revealed that some of the officials from National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) made handsome profits from selling data. Since then, the National Bureau of Statistics have suspended the provision of important economic data to third party institutions, causing the market players to question the veracity of the data and making it even harder to assess the market needs.

ANBOUND's research team is of the view that in China, there are many more institutions that make profit by selling industry data, just like NBS.

Such an approach might be justifiable if we are dealing with enterprises; however, it is questionable whether the governmental institutions should make profit from data that are supposed to be available freely to the public.

So long as the data is not related to national security, the data should be freely accessible by the public, such an approach should be seen as an integral part of modern state governance.