economy - The number game on foreign residents

Simon World wonders why according to the official figures China has only 90,000 foreign residents working in the world's most booming economy. The first and most simple answer is that all figures in China are distorted, fake or otherwise not true.
Too often the outside world believes it, for example when the Ministry of Culture says it has checked 1.8 million internet cafes and closed over a thousand. They just pretend they are working, while they mainly send out press releases.
How could it work out then for these figures, supplied by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security? First, it does not count several groups of people who are essential for China's economic growth, the Taiwanese, Hong Kong citizens and Chinese with a foreign passport. Then the large number of foreigners working with a Shenzhen visa are ignored, since they do not have a working permit. This together makes the official figures pretty useless.