Thomas G. Rawski

What is happening to China's GDP statistics?

Abstract This paper argues that official Chinese statistics contain major exaggerations of real output growth beginning 1998. The standard data contain numerous inconsistencies. Chinese commentaries castigate widespread falsification at lower levels and question the autheticity of figures emanating from the central statistical authorities. The author speculates that cumulative GDP growth during 1997/2001 was no more one-third of official claims, and possibly much smaller.

Productivity change in Chinese industry: 1953–1985

Abstract Previous studies of productivity change in Chinese industry show that stagnating productivity has persisted into the 1980s in spite of Chinas reform efforts. Once non-industrial resources are excluded from published factor input data and fixed assets are corrected for inflation, Chinas state industry shows a positive rate of multifactor productivity growth over the period 1953–1985 with productivity accelerating from the late 1970s. Weights used to combine the input data are obtained from estimates of Cobb-Douglas and translog production functions rather than, as in most other studies, from factor income shares or arbitrary weights.

Inequality in the Rewards for Holding up Half the Sky: Gender Wage Gaps in China's Urban Labour Market, 1988-1994

The intuition underlying our analysis of these data is simple and direct. Each yearbook entry shows the proportion of female workers and the average wage of all workers. If mens wages exceed womens wages by a substantial margin we expect a negative association between the proportion of female workers and the average wage: the higher the proportion of women the lower the average wage. Applying econometric methods to large numbers of such observations permits us to obtain statistical estimates of the gender wage gap in Chinas urban labour markets. We seek answers to a series of interrelated questions. Do men earn more than women? If so is the wage gap large or small? Does the male-female wage differential rise or fall over time? To what extent can the wage gap be attributed to specific factors such as location economic sector type of ownership (state collective other) or educational attainments? What is the size and trend of the residual male-female wage inequalities which persist after we apply statistical controls for these factors? To what extent are women crowded into low-paying industries? (excerpt)

Productivity growth and convergence across China's industrial economy

Using a firm-level data set for 1998 and 2005 including all of Chinas ‘above designated size’ enterprises that together account for more than 85% of Chinas industrial output, this paper investigates three issues. One key issue in Chinas industrial system is the extent to which growth has been driven by productivity change. A second issue is the relative productivity performance of enterprises of different ownership types, including a comparison of state-owned versus various forms of non-state ownership. The third issue is whether productivity across Chinas key regions–coast, northeast, central, and west–exhibits convergence or divergence. One key finding that cuts across all three issues is the exceptional contribution to productivity growth made by exiting and entering firms, much of which is associated with restructuring. During 1998–2005, the phenomenon of firm exit and entry contributed substantially to Chinas overall industrial productivity growth, to the relatively rapid growth of state industry productivity, and to substantial productivity catch-up with the coastal region by many of the interior provinces.

Implications of China' Reform Experience

As reform approaches the end of its second decade, the prospect of an interpretive summary of Chinas recent economic experience becomes irresistible. The analyst may plausibly hope to separate trend from cycle and pick out key elements in the kaleidoscopic jumble of events. Chinas unique combination of enormous size, large and unexpected economic gains, unorthodox policies, hybrid institutional structures and formidable challenges to future economic advance adds to the promise of such a review. This article begins with a summary of reform outcomes, followed by discussions of the reform process, the implications of recent reform experience and Chinas economic prospects. It concludes with a hesitant excursion into the realm of “lessons” from Chinas reform experience.

On the trail of China's phantom farmers

Abstract Many studies of Chinas economy use standard yearbook data for Chinas farm labor force. These data massively overestimate the number of Chinese farm workers. Our calculations show that the number of “phantom farmers” actually working outside agriculture may easily surpass 100 million. This paper reveals the implausible implications of the standard data, uses information from cost surveys to derive new estimates of Chinas farm work force, and investigates the implications of the new, lower series for agricultural employment on the measurement and interpretation of recent Chinese growth.

Reforming China's Economy: What Have We Learned?

China is a huge economic success story. The past two decades have brought big increases in every imaginable indicator of economic performance: output, productivity, employment, incomes, exports, life expectancy, height, weight, and so on. This success is completely unexpected. No economist anticipated Chinas immense dynamism. Many (including myself) doubted that the partial and hesitant reform measures initiated in the 1980s would substantially alter the growth path of Chinas economy. These immense gains are of particular importance to economics because the main characteristics of Chinas recent growth spurt conflict sharply with an embedded orthodoxy among economists that rests on a peculiar combination of emotion, ideology and scientific analysis.1 This conflict between expectations and outcomes makes the study of China uniquely significant for the economics of development and transition. Chinas reform success is based on the gradual replacement of state control with market allocation. Market and plan coexist uneasily. While market forces continue to erode the scope and impact of govern? ment decision-making, the imprint of official actions remains large, as when plans for credit and investment create seasonal fluctuations linked with the governments budgetary calendar.2

China's Great Economic Transformation: China's Industrial Development

INTRODUCTION Chinas industries have achieved remarkable development since the start of reform in the late 1970s. Although this chapter will outline both the quantitative and institutional dimensions of recent growth, its chief objective is to examine what we see as the central achievement of Chinese industry: the emergence of mechanisms for extending industrial capability, which we measure by the capacity to sell into overseas markets, to a growing array of products and sectors. This accomplishment, which only a few economies – among them Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, India, and Brazil – have matched since the end of World War II, ensures that Chinas recent boom represents a permanent shift rather than a temporary respite from centuries of poverty. At the start of reform, Chinese industry had already attained substantial size. Chinese factories and mines employed more workers in 1978 than the combined total of all other third-world nations. Success with nuclear weapons and satellite technology demonstrated new technical strength. Yet, visitors to Chinese factories encountered obsolete and dysfunctional products: vans and transformers that failed to keep out rainwater, sewing machines that leaked oil onto the fabric, power tillers rusting outside a factory that churned out fresh batches of unwanted inventory, and so on.

Roundtable on Chinese Economic Statistics Introduction

This roundtable aims to direct the attention of China specialists, particularly in the economics field, to issues surrounding the accuracy and veracity of China’s economic statistics. Over the past two decades, China’s statistical agencies have showered researchers with a growing range of systematic and detailed data about economic performance at the national, sectoral, provincial, and local level. Periodic censuses of population, industry, services, and agriculture, and surveys of households and enterprises, some conducted with the participation of international agencies and overseas scholars, reveal additional information. Energetic efforts by China’s National Bureau of Statistics (NBS, Guojia tongjiju, formerly known as the State Statistics Bureau) to align published data with standard categories of national income accounting and other international conventions have enhanced the comparability, and hence the research value of Chinese statistics. While recognizing the inevitable limitations of quantitative measures of a huge and diverse economy, few economists have hesitated to utilize standard yearbook data for analytic and comparative research. A number of authors have discussed possible biases in the data for population, cultivated acreage, manufacture of new products, industrial fixed assets, output of township and village industries, unemployment, agricultural labor and other specific categories. Several studies suggest mild upward bias in official figures for long-term growth of GDP and industrial production. Nonetheless, most informed observers appear to share Marton’s (2000) view that ‘‘China’s demographic, social, and economic statistics are abundant and fairly reliable by developing country standards’’ (p. 202).

New Estimates of Fixed Investment and Capital Stock for Chinese State Industry

Measures of societys stock of fixed assets are necessary for describing production technology, evaluating capital-output ratios and analysing multi-factor productivity. Even in advanced industrial economies, existing series of fixed capital incorporate many weaknesses and arbitrary assumptions; in low-income nations, these problems are often severe. China is no exception. While recognizing the inherent difficulty of compiling capital stock estimates for an economy in which prices have long deviated from scarcity values, this article uses currently available materials to derive an improved time series of fixed capital stock for independent accounting units within Chinese state industry. Our objective is to produce new series that adhere as closely as possible to the standard national accounting concepts of gross domestic fixed capital formation and gross reproducible fixed assets. Despite the difficulties mentioned below, we believe that our new series are distinctly superior to existing figures for the analysis of capital deepening, multi-factor productivity and other aspects of Chinese state industry requiring estimates of fixed capital stock.