Just 28 kilometers east of Datong, Shanxi Province, one of China's most famous coalmining cities, lies Datong county. It's not a large place, consisting of a couple of pockmarked main roads, several graying three or four-storey buildings and a scattering of small mud-brick houses.

From the mid-1990s this county was classified as a "well-off" area.

But according to locals, this was never the reality.

"I can't describe what a well-off county should be like exactly, but it's definitely not like Datong county is today, with such a shabby county town and such poor villages," a resident, who asked to be called Fan Jie, told the Global Times.

After obtaining the title of well-off county in 1996, Datong county finally converted its status to poverty-stricken in late January 2013.

Both locals and officials believe that the "well-off" title had proved a hindrance to efforts to receive assistance.

Price of vanity

"It was a vanity project. Compared to the poverty-stricken county nearby, we, a well-off county, were poorer," Wang Hanbin, the head director of the Datong county poverty relief office, told the Beijing News.

The report said that local officials admitted that the statistics were recorded as being higher than they really were, in order to apply for and keep the title of being well-off.

The standard for applying for the well-off title in 1996 was that the per capita GDP should be over 2,500 yuan ($401.50) per annum. According to the Statistical Yearbook for Shanxi in 1996, per capita GDP was 2,861 yuan. The government revenues and personal incomes of the county were recorded as rising over the following years.

To decide which counties are impoverished at the national level, the central government considers factors such as the size of the population living below the poverty line, per capita net income, per capita GDP and per capita government revenue.

The first two factors are calculated by the National Bureau of Statistics, while the last two factors are supplied by local governments, who sometimes modify the statistics.

The result is a poor county that struggles to pay its employees.

"Many people who work in public institutions, such as schools and village committees, don't even get their wages on time," Fan, a former employee of the local government, said.

Scrolling through comments on online forum Baidu Tieba, it's easy to see that locals have plenty of frustrations. They claimed that their monthly wages were on average, 200 yuan lower than in nearby counties.

"The government of a well-off county cannot pay wages properly, but maybe a poverty-stricken county can," one Web user joked.

Growing up in a village in the northwest of the county, Wu, a 40-year-old vegetable farmer and seedling businessmen, said the county was relatively richer in the 1990s compared to counties nearby but the development seems to have stagnated since then.

"I can't say our living standards didn't improve at all. They just improved much slower than they did elsewhere, so we seem poorer now," Wu said.

Choosing poverty

Whilst sometimes, officials tampered with statistics to present themselves as well-off, the reverse is actually more common.

Being registered as "poverty stricken" can bring various benefits. There are access to special funds, education benefits and tax incentives, to name just a few. As incomes rise, counties often fight to stay on the list.

The chance to become "poverty stricken" arrived in 2011, when Datong county was included in the trans-provincial scheme for poverty relief for the Yanshan Mountain-Taihang Mountain region. In late January 2013, the county finally received documents from the provincial government confirming its impoverished status.

"It was a chance to develop our economy as it can bring in more money and other investment. Economic agriculture, especially daylily will become a main development target of the county," He Rui, the head of the publicity department of Datong county, told the Global Times. Daylily is a locally-grown vegetable - the local government received 10 million yuan to develop this industry, as part of a fund that assists industry development, agriculture and training.

"My daylily seedling business did well in recent years and it became easier to apply for loans from local bank branches," Wu said.

Officials from some areas in Guizhou Province, however, have fought hard to stay on the poverty-stricken list.

"To be honest, the statistics we reported to the central government were fixed and we had to cover up some areas of development and achievements we made in combating poverty. It was very common," a provincial-level Guizhou poverty alleviation official told the Global Times.

The official explained they did it because they were afraid the central government would reduce assistance if the data showed that many places had escaped poverty.

"The development of many poor rural places in Guizhou is based on guided investment. So if the alleviation funding was removed, the area might become poor again," the Guizhou official added.

A game of statistics

"It's a game of statistics. When the local government scrambled to become a member of the poverty alleviation program, they tampered with the statistics regarding the local economy, as it did when applying to be called well-off," Du Xiaoshan, a researcher at the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), told the Global Times.

Lingqiu county, a county near Datong registered as poverty-stricken since 1991, had about 550 million yuan in revenue in 2012, while Datong county had 330 million yuan, the Beijing News reported.

The same report also said that Lingqiu county tried to cover up wealth in order to stay on the list.

However, even Datong county's per capita income was above 4,000 yuan per year, which was way above the national poverty line standard of 2,300 yuan per year.

Both counties were still included in the list.

Both the poverty relief offices of Datong and Shanxi Province refused to comment or reveal the details of Datong county's application when reached by the Global Times.

"We heard about the discussion online. All I can say is that the county received the title through the proper process," the official from the poverty relief offices said.