The palest ink is better than the best memory.” China’s vast lexicon of idioms is replete with reverence for the reliability of the written word. But the country that started writing on oracle bones more than 3,000 years ago finds itself the victim of a dangerous information gap.

A wholesale breakdown in the reliability of financial information is exacerbating the misallocation of capital that lies at the root of China’s waning economic efficiency and burgeoning levels of corporate debt. Consider, for instance, how a Chinese financial institution might try to find accurate information on a company that it is considering for a loan. As a first option, it might turn to media reports. This could turn out to be rash. The articles it finds may have been influenced by “envelope journalism”, a practice that involves slipping cash into envelopes for journalists at press conferences to foster positive feelings. So prevalent are such activities that a Chinese company offers an Uber-style app to make the planted news industry more efficient. The app, called “Zhao Jizhe” (Find a Journalist), puts companies in touch with journalists for hire, using a graduated scale.

In the same way that Uber customers pay more for a Mercedes with a leather interior than they do for a Honda Accord, the app lists charges from Rmb1,000 for a “standard” journalist who can reach only one outlet, Rmb3,000 for “mid-level” and “high-level” writers, and Rmb8,000 for a premium service that procures a “senior” journalist and guaranteed coverage in 25 publications, four of which are well-known.