BEIJING -- China on Thursday set up a law enforcement unit under its statistics bureau to handle data falsification cases.

The new enforcement unit, established under the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), will prevent, investigate and punish data fabrication, according to a statement on the NBS website.

A provincial official admitted in January that from 2011 to 2014, economic data from the northeast province of Liaoning had been riddled with false information.

Days after the revelation, Ning Jizhe, head of the NBS, defended the accuracy of national data, saying the NBS had adopted measures to ensure the authenticity and reliability of statistics.