The question was simple enough Sunday, and the answer distilled how difficult it can be to extract information in China.

Hundreds of foreign correspondents, like myself, are observing a huge conclave of the Chinese Communist Party, which is having its once-every-five-years congress.

The event opens Monday, and at the end of seven days, we may know who will take the reins from President Hu Jintao when he steps down, probably in 2012.

A spokesman, Li Dongshen, took questions at a news conference Sunday afternoon.

The final question from a Singapore reporter was this: Pollution and land disputes in China are getting worse. Social conflicts appear to be escalating. Could you release the latest figures regarding these social conflicts?

Li did not answer that question. Instead, he described social unrest in China as “only regional and individual.” In the larger picture, he said, “the majority of people have enjoyed real benefits from reform and opening up.”

Communist party leaders, he added, “exercise our power for the interests of the people. . . . The core of our work is to ensure, uphold and promote the fundamental interest of the overwhelming majority of the people.”

That goes not only for national party leaders but also local ones, he said, and “the bad incidents taking place in some individual localities were appropriately solved.

“Now in China, the economy grows, there is social progress and the people enjoy higher and higher living standards. The people are satisfied. Thank you.”

And with that, the news conference ended. So if you want to know actual facts about social unrest, go elsewhere. The party has acknowledged that 97,260 of its members were punished last year for corruption, influence peddling and other illicit behavior. In the first nine months of 2006, China tallied 17,900 “mass protests” around the country, the official Xinhua news agency said earlier this year.

But there are no new figures. Information on discontent is hard to come by. And by the way, how many of those punished party members actually served any jail time?

The party wants you to know only one thing: People are satisfied.

It’s just the troublesome journalists who aren’t.