On 2026-10-16 in Beijing, the National Bureau of Statistics published Order No. 37, a revision to the rules for managing enterprises deemed seriously dishonest in statistics. The legal text says the measures were approved on 2026-09-29, signed by NBS director Kang Yi on 2026-10-12 and will take effect on 2026-12-01. Order No. 37 The clearest immediate change is procedural: the order does not itself prove tougher or looser enforcement, but it does spell out more of the steps between a penalty, public naming and a possible credit repair.
That matters because the order turns a broad sanctioning framework into a timed administrative process. After an administrative penalty takes effect, the responsible statistics agency has five working days to issue a recognition notice, the enterprise has five working days to submit a statement or defence, and the agency then has seven working days to decide; if recognition follows, the information must be publicised within 10 working days. Order No. 37 NBS says the revision also adds a seven-working-day verification period for requests to correct wrongly publicised information, and that public display generally is not suspended during administrative reconsideration or litigation. NBS summary That combination suggests a system designed to keep disclosure moving even when a company disputes details.
The repair side is clearer too, but not necessarily softer. NBS says the disclosure period changes from a fixed one year to a range of one to three years, while the earliest point for seeking credit repair moves from six months of disclosure to one year. NBS summary Under the legal text, an enterprise may apply only after one year of disclosure and only if it has fulfilled the administrative penalty, corrected the violation, avoided a new statistical violation and made a credit commitment; the application can go through the national Credit China website or an offline route. Order No. 37 As analysis, that means access to repair becomes easier to file but harder to obtain quickly.
The revision also narrows what the state says it should publish. The legal text bars disclosure that would reveal state secrets, work secrets, commercial secrets, personal privacy or personal information, or that would harm national security or the social public interest. Order No. 37 In an official Q&A, an unnamed NBS representative said disclosure content is reduced and will no longer include the enterprise’s legal representative or principal, or details of the administrative penalty. NBS Q&A The public signal, then, is still reputational, but with a narrower data footprint.
The same Q&A says the revision was meant to align the 2022 measures with 2025 credit-system policy documents and the 2024 amended Statistics Law. NBS Q&A That framing matters. It points less to a newly invented punishment and more to harmonisation: statistical enforcement is being fitted into the broader official machinery for credit records, disclosure and repair. NBS also says agencies must decide whether to accept a repair application within three working days, while fraud during repair can lead to revocation and renewed three-year public display. NBS Q&A Credit repair here is therefore conditional remediation, not automatic erasure.
What the reviewed record cannot yet establish is just as important. As of 2026-10-31, the revised measures are published but not yet in force, and the NBS documents reviewed here do not show named enterprises processed under Order No. 37, uptake of the new online channel, or any measured effect on statistical quality. Order No. 37 NBS summary For readers tracking China’s statistical governance, the practical watchpoint after 2026-12-01 is not the announcement itself but whether NBS and lower-level statistics authorities begin to publish recognitions, corrections and repairs in a way that matches the new timetable and tighter disclosure limits.
