China's Growth and Productivity Performance Debate Revisited - Accounting for China’s Sources of Growth with a New Data Set

This study explores problems with official Chinese economic data that are often ignored or overlooked in existing academic studies, including structural breaks in employment statistics, implausibly high labor productivity figures related to “nonmaterial” services, and serious inconsistencies between output measures in industrial statistics versus those in national accounts, as well as between volume movements and changes in real values. Alternative adjustments for these problems are the basis for the construction of a new set of data for the aggregate economy and its five major sectors in 1949–2012.

This working paper is complimentary.