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Part II. MANUFACTURING AND EXTRACTIVE

INDUSTRIES

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CCP..

FBIS.

Field, Lardy, and Emerson,

1976

I. INTRODUCTION

Today, when the Chinese are determined to build a strong, modern nation, the outlook for industrial performance is of concern not only to China specialists but also to policymakers, businessmen, and all who are interested in the lives and fortunes of the nearly 1 billion Chinese people. Since the rehabilitation of Teng Hsiao-p'ing, the Chinese have been quite open in discussing their past shortcomings and current problems, but they have not given us data in the form necessary for an assessment of industrial performance. Therefore, following the work that Field did with Lardy and Emerson,' we have gathered scattered statements about the growth of the gross value of industrial output (GVIO) for individual provinces in order to reconstruct the GVIO data for each of the 29 provinces and for the country as a whole. The pattern and rates of growth shown by the data are then analyzed in the light of the economic and political problems of the last decade.

The GVIO data published or broadcast by the Chinese are difficult to use. First, the data are a mixture of estimates made before the end of the year, final figures, and subsequent revisions that are seldom explicitly identified; even data from a single source are sometimes inconsistent. Consider, for example, the following figures for Kwangtung: 3

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Here, the revisions are small and appear to be reasonable, and the inconsistency between the annual increases and the growth for the 3 years as a whole is minor.

Second, in the last year or two the Chinese have been careless in handling statistical data and, in particular, in translating them into English. The most frequent source of error has been in the translation of the character pei. For example, a Ta-kung pao English-language supplement dated September 15, 1977, reported that "[Shanghai's] total industrial output value is now more than 11 times what it was immediately after liberation," whereas it is clear from other statements that output was actually 19.3 times that of 1949. The original Chinese was probably shih to pei (which literally means "an increase of more than 10 times over" and by accepted usage "an increase of 10 to 20 times over" the value in the specified base period). Just as a twofold increase is three times, a tenfold increase is 11 times. Thus, the Chinese

1 Robert Michael Field, Nicholas R. Lardy, and John Philip Emerson, Provincial Industrial Output in the People's Republic of China; 1949-75, Foreign Economie Report No. 12, U.S. Department of Commerce, Washington, D.C., 1976. 2 Provincial GVIO series for the years 1965-77 are presented in table C-1. For sources and methodology, see CIA, "The Gross Value of Industrial Output in the People's Republic of China: 1965-77," June 1978. Throughout this article, the term "province" includes the five autonomous regions and the three directly administered municipalities.

The original figures are cited in FBIS, Jan. 16, 1976, H1, and FBIS, Jan. 26, 1977, H2; the revised figures. are in "Learn from Teaching," p. 67.

FBIS, Dec. 8, 1977, E5.

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