There was some bad news from Inner Mongolia last week: Apparently its headline economic statistics are complete nonsense. The remote northern Chinese province, famous for its sweeping Midwest-like plains, said its 2016 industrial growth had been overstated by 40%, while government revenue was inflated a mere 26%.

This latest revelation on Chinese data malfeasance, following a similar admission by rust-belt province Liaoning last year, is likely to renew hand-wringing in the West about the—cough—unique nature of Chinese economic...