Gyatso, a 38-year-old farmer from Jangshar, Lhundrub county, said his income has doubled since he started to keep Phanpo sheep six years ago.[Photo by Zhu Xingxin / China Daily]

A?sheep?farm that claimed to have tens of thousands of sheep has been found to have only several hundred. Tian Wentao, director of animal husbandry bureau of Jingbian county, Shaanxi province in Northwest China, said the wrong number had been given because it was difficult to count the sheep that kept moving around. The discrepancies should be cleared by investigation, Rednet.cn comments:

The official said in November 2015 that the county of Jingbian had one farm with about 10,000 sheep, 37 farms with 1,000 sheep each and 110 farms with 500 sheep each. But the largest farm had no more than 3,000 sheep, and many others only had around 100 each.

Questioned about the discrepancies between the numbers claimed and the real numbers, Tian said it was hard to accurately count the number of sheep because they kept moving around.

However, the falsified figures were presented as an achievement of the local government, and also used to gain subsidies from the municipal and provincial governments. Every year, the Shaanxi government gave large sums of money to subsidize the sheep farms.

The non-existent sheep were in farms under the name of local officials' relatives, and helped them gain government subsidies of 200,000 yuan ($30,700). Meanwhile, a farmer with 300 sheep has received no subsidies over the last three years.

Faking the number of sheep in the farms isn't only the theft of governmental money, it also damages the government's image among the people.