The most common departure from moral probity is the use of influence in getting scarce goods, higher pay, and cushy assignments-what good is it to have friends and relatives if they can't help you out? The placing of relatives in high posts occurs from the very top to the bottom of the system. At the top, the administrative heads of mass women's groups are likely to be the wives of prominent officials. In the middle, the director of a cement factory in a hinterland city receives a special allotment of scarce goods through the back door of a state store or gets his son into the provincial technical institute through a phone call to the head of the Institute's Party committee. At the bottom, the workpoint recorder of a production team enters a few extra points on his cousin's account. Counterforces are set up in the system, for example, the constant pressure on high-ranking cadres to volunteer their children for a lifetime of service in the countryside.

Capsule Assessment of System

While enforcing conformity and thus narrowing choices, the leadership of the People's Republic of China has supplied vigor and pace to the economy in the first quarter of a century of Communist rule. In two major instances, the economy has been shaken by political turmoil, as major economic programs have come under fire. For the period as a whole, a sense of movement and concrete achievement has replaced what was often a sense of futility, frustration, and fatalism. The regime has successfully adopted a variant of the Soviet economic model. It has shrewdly fleshed out the skeleton of the Soviet-style command economy with traditional Chinese elements and Maoist revolutionary principles.

AN ASSESSMENT OF CHINESE ECONOMIC DATA: AVAILABILITY, RELIABILITY, AND USABILITY

The sources of information pertinent to the economy of the People's Republic of China (PRC) may be classified into two categories. One category contains the sources stemming from Chinese publications, news releases and broadcasts.1 The bulk of these materials is translated into English by the U.S. Consulate General in Hong Kong, the Joint Publications Research Service, and the Foreign Broadcast Information Service. A concise summary of economic information contained in Chinese broadcasts is published weekly by the British Broadcasting Corporation.3

The other category consists of mainly secondary sources originating outside the Chinese mainland. Included are refugees' and visitors' reports, publications in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and Europe and scholarly studies and Government reports published in the United States. In addition, large quantities of foreign statistics can be found

1 In the 1950's there was a relatively large number of Chinese publications containing economic information. The number has diminished greatly since 1960, and at present only a few periodicals and newspapers are available to the West. These periodicals include Peking Review, China Reconstructs, China's Foreign Trade, Hung-ch'i (Red Flag), and Hsueh-hsi yu pi-p'an (Study and Criticism). Chinese newspapers available outside the mainland are Jen-min jih-pao (People's Daily) and Kuang-ming jih-pao (Kuang-ming Dafly) and occasionally a few local dailies mainly from Kwangtung Province. Certain Chinese publications in Hong Kong, such as Ta-Kung Pao (Ta-Kung Daily), Wen-hui Pao (Wen-Hui Daily) and Ching-chi tao-pao (Economic Reporter) also include reports on the PRC economy. In addition, books and monographs published in China sometimes contain economic data.

2 These translations appear in Survey of China Mainland Press, Selections from China Mainland Magazines, and Current Background (all by American Consulate General in Hong Kong), Translations on the People's Republic of China (by U.S. Joint Publications Research Service), and Daily Report-People's Republic of China (by U.S. Foreign Broadcast Information Service, hereafter abbreviated as FBIS).

3 Summary of World Broadcasts (SWB), Part 3, The Far East, Weekly Economic Report, published by the Monitoring Service of the British Broadcasting Corporation.

4 Some unpublished official documents also have become available outside the mainland. For an example, a number of classified materials have turned up in the publications issued by research organizations in Taiwan. A recent document of the Kunming Military Region contains some economic information, and is included as an appendix to a monograph entitled Chinese Communist Internal Politics and Foreign Policy (Taipei, Taiwan: Institute of International Relations, 1974).

in the publications of China's trading partners. These statistics are readily available in several sources.5

II. QUALITATIVE DATA ON THE CHINESE ECONOMY

The main purpose of this paper is to assess the availability, reliability, and usability of the quantitative economic data published by the Chinese. However, the qualitative information published in China is also indispensable to research on the Chinese economy, which in the last 25 years has undergone frequent and drastic changes in both basic structure and the system of planning and management. In this section, therefore, a few comments on qualitative data are in order.

The amount of available information on Chinese economic policy and institutions was already scarce in the 1950's by international standards, and diminished further after 1960. Western scholars were able to perform fairly penetrating analyses for the 1950's of certain aspects of the Chinese system such as land reform, agricultural collectivization, the statistical system, wage patterns, the incentive structure, the price system, the budgetary system, monetary policy, and industrial management. Any in-depth study of one of these or other institutional aspects of the Chinese economy during the last 15 years would be nearly impossible due to lack of information. The possible exception is the commune system, on which there are relative large quantities of available data relating to its organization, management, production, distribution, labor allocation, and the like.

Chinese economic data are most scarce at the macro level. Since the early 1960's no detailed documents on economic policy and planning have been published. The PRC is now in the final year of the Fourth Five-Year Plan (1971-75), yet the contents of the plan have not been made known. None of the recent visitors to China was able to obtain any significant information on the planning apparatus, the statistical system and the price mechanism. In the last few years, an increasing number of speeches and articles have appeared to discuss the tax structure, financial achievements, international economic policy, environmental measures, and population problems. But no significant amount of new information was disclosed.

In the absence of systematic qualitative data, economic researchers on China are faced with tremendous difficulties in their attempts to achieve detailed analyses of the PRC economy. However, some problems of a broad nature may be analyzed on the basis of fragmentary data. One possibility is to study a macroeconomic problem through a painstaking process of piecing together micro data from a variety of

sources.

Another way is to examine changes in the Chinese economic policy or system within a broad framework formulated on the basis of scattered, and sometimes seemingly unrelated, official statements. For example, a reasonably clear understanding of the evolution of Chinese economic policy and shifts in planning priorities may be gained by bringing together a number of Mao's quotations on economic matters and then examining the background and origin of these quotations and their

These sources include World Trade Annals prepared by the Statistical Office of the United Nations, Statistics of Foreign Trade Series published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and various publications of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Additional trade data may be found in a number of specialized publications such as China Trade and Economic Newsletter (London).

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significance in the context of current development. Another example is to appraise China's current foreign trade policy by comparing recent official statements with a number of authoritative articles published in the 1960's and the 1950's to determine if the official position toward foreign trade has been changed. A third example is to assess China's economic thinking and current policy toward imported equipment and technology through an analysis of the recent debate over the importation of advanced industrial techniques from developed countries."

More methods can be cited. Research on most areas would necessarily lead to broad generalizations. Except for a few cases where both qualitative and quantitative data are relatively abundant, any profound analysis based on the former alone would be most difficult.

III. TYPES OF AVAILABLE CHINESE STATISTICS

While the available amount of qualitative data on the PRC economy is limited, the amount of published Chinese statistics is even more scarce. For the 1950's, in addition to a number of figures scattered in a variety of books, journals, and newspapers, there was only one slender statistical handbook, Ten Great Years, published in 1959.10 An almost total statistical blackout of macroeconomic data was imposed by the Chinese authorities for the entire decade of the 1960's. Then Premier Chou En-lai gave some aggregative data for 1970 to the late Edgar Snow during the winter of 1970-71.11 Since then, a flow of statistical information has resumed, but on a scale smaller than that of the 1950's.

Figures published since 1970 may be classified into three groups according to the level of aggregation. One group consisted of statistics pertaining to the economy as a whole. Most of these statistics are percentage rates of growth over the preceding year and/or 1965, the year before the Cultural Revolution. The output indexes for 1974, reported by Premier Chou in his speech to the National People's Congress in January 1975, were based on 1964.12 Frequently these percentages were given without bases. Included in the second group were statistics relating to individual provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities. Absolute figures appeared more frequently in this group, but

• Some of Mao's quotations were analyzed in my paper, "China's Foreign Trade Policy: A Current Appraisal.' (Research Note No. 9, Trade Analysis Division, Bureau of East-West Trade, U.S. Department of Commerce, Aug. 15. 1974).

7 These statements are contained in the following articles: "Chairman of Chinese Delegation Teng Hsiao-ping's Speech at Special Session of U.N. General Assembly." Peking Review. No. 16. Apr. 19, 1974, pp. 6-11: Li Chiang (Minister of Foreign Trade), “New Developments in China's Foreign Trade." China's Foreign Trade, No. 1. 1974, pp. 1-5; Wang Yao-ting (Chairman of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade). "China's Foreign Trade." Peking Review, No. 41, Oct. 11, 1974. pp. 18-20, 26; and Shu Hsun. "Develop Foreign Trade by Maintaining Independence and Keeping the Initiative in Our Own Hands and Relying on Our Own Efforts," People's Daily, Oct. 15, 1974, p. 6. 8 These articles include: The Writing Group of the Peking Municipal Revolutionary Committee. "China's Road of Socialist Industrialization." Hung-chi, No. 10. 1969, pp. 22-31; and The Common Program of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference adopted Sept. 29, 1949 (Article 57).

The policy toward imported technology and equipment has been debated often in China. In early 1974 the debate was resumed with increased intensity. The revival of the discussion came with the publication of two articles in the January and February 1974 issues of the Party journal, Hung-chi. Two articles in the People's Daily related the discussion on Mar. 22. 1974, and another appeared on May 3 of the same year.

10 Most of the statistical data for the 1950's may be found in Nai-Ruenn Chen, Chinese Economic Statistics, Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co., 1967.

11 Edgar Snow, "Talks with Chou En-lai: The Open Door," The New Republic, vol. 164, No. 13 (Mar. 27, 1971).

12 Chou En-lai, "Government Work Report Delivered to the Fourth National People's Congress, Jan. 13, 1975," People's Daily, Jan. 21, 1975, p. 1.

most of the production data were still given in percentage terms. The third group contained the numerical information at more disaggregated levels such as statistics for cities, counties, factories, communes, and production teams. In this group absolute figures appeared most frequently, and a wide range of data was published on various aspects of Chinese economic life.

Recently published Chinese statistics also may be grouped according to economic sector. The following gives a brief summary of the types of statistics available for each sector.

Industry

Output figures are available in absolute amounts only for crude oil. steel, chemical fertilizers, and cotton cloth. Percentages can be found for, in addition to these products, electric power, coal, natural gas, timber, iron ore, pig iron, rolled steel, mining equipment, metallurgical equipment, medical equipment, powered irrigation equipment, tractors, internal combustion engines, rice transplanters, insecticides, chemical fibers, polyester fabric, cotton yarn, and a number of consumer goods such as radios, television sets, sewing machines, bicycles, watches, woolen textiles, sugar, salt, canned food, and certain athletic goods. A large number of figures for the output of these and other products are also available at provincial and lower levels.

Percentage data on the gross value of industrial output have been published for certain years at both national and local levels. These data are relatively plentiful for provinces and their equivalents. Indexes of the gross value output of light industry may be found for some provinces and smaller administrative units. Figures for a given year are generally shown as a percentage of the 1949 or 1965 level.

In addition to physical and value output estimates, available industrial data include the number of technical innovations accomplished, the number of new products, the number of product varieties and specifications and the rate of cost reduction. One useful type of available information shows the growth of small industry in China. Data have been published for several industries on the number of small plants, the rates of increase in the output of these plants, and the share of the output of small plants in total output. These data may be found in relatively large quantities at all levels for certain industries supporting agricultural production such as hydroelectric power, agricultural machinery, chemical fertilizer, and cement. Scattered information also may be found for small iron and steel plants, electronics factories, and coal mines.

Some published statistics are labeled as "the support of industry given to agriculture." These data were usually shown in terms of percentage increases in the supply to agriculture of tractors, chemical fertilizers, insecticides, irrigation and drainage equipment, internal combustion engines, and electricity.

Transportation and Communications

Some percentage data have been published for the country as a whole on railways, highways, inland navigation, freight volume, and postal service. Absolute data in terms of kilometers can be found for 1971.