Li Keqiang was being tipped as China’s possible next leader in March 2007 when he visited the Beijing residence of then-U.S. Ambassador Clark T. Randt Jr. Over dinner, the rising Communist Party official made a frank declaration: China’s official economic statistics are “man-made,” and therefore unreliable, according to a leaked diplomatic cable.

Li never reached the pinnacle of party rule in China, but he got close, and his assessment of official economic data fundamentally altered how economists measured the country’s development.