28 areas surpass national GDP

The total GDP value of 28 municipalities, provinces, and regions have surpassed China's GDP value released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Beijing News reported Tuesday.

The total GDP in the 28 provincial-level areas, except Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Heilongjiang provinces and Shanghai, amounted to 58.94 trillion yuan ($9.74 trillion), according to data compiled by the newspaper, higher than the 56.88 trillion yuan calculated by the NBS.

The major reason for the disparity between the official and the newspaper's figures is because a number of local governments modified their GDP figures to meet with the assessment from the central authorities, the newspaper cited Liu Yuanchun, assistant dean of the School of Economics at Renmin University of China, as saying.