A female Chinese worker sews clothes at a garment factory in Huaibei city, East China's Anhui province, June 1, 2015. [Photo/IC]

A unified accounting method of local and national GDP data

Wang Baoan, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, said: "formulating a unified accounting method for local and national GDP data" is one of the Bureau's five major reforms.

If provincial calculations of Gross Domestic Product, or GDP, are added up, the aggregate, which is supposed to equal the national GDP, is often bigger. For example, in the first six months of 2015, sum of local GDP numbers is 2.7 trillion yuan ($0.4 trillion) more than the national GDP.

The difference lies in the current accounting method. Based on the method, local governments compile their respective statistics, while the National Bureau of Statistics is responsible for the national GDP.