China's statistical system and resources

Explaining sectoral discrepancies between national and provincial statistics in China

“…In addition to censuses, two other raw data gathering methods are also used in China: direct reporting forms for all enterprises above a designated size and sample surveys (Xue, 2004). In the industrial sector, all enterprises with revenue from principle business above a cutoff level 15 have to complete the required statistical forms and then submit them to the appropriate authorities, whereas the data for enterprises under the cutoff level are gathered through sample surveys.…”

“…20 Thus, based on their own data sources at each governmental level, the key statistical data including GDP and energy consumption are calculated separately followed the standardized calculation method issued by the NBS. 18 At grassroots township level, there is no office or division specifically responsible for statistical work; however, an officer is assigned the duty and reports to the statistical office at county level (Xue, 2004). 19 For detailed information, one can see Table 6 in Section 4.2.…”

Methodological Challenges Confronted when Conducting Management Research in China

“…The use of secondary data, especially statistical information provided by government agencies, has its own, and different, challenges for researchers, especially in respect of accuracy (Luk, 1999;Xue, 2004). China is a research environment in which the advantages of triangulation (always a sensible approach in cross cultural research -e.g.…”

In Researching Emerging Markets, Anthropology often Trumps Statistics

“…Even more fundamentally, it is central to the sustainability of the whole business system (Redding & Witt 2007) . Though the situation in China has improved dramatically compared to the situation before its economic reforms began in 1978 (Chow 2006), concerns remain about the reliability of official Chinese statistical data (Luk 1999;Xue 2004;Koch-Weser 2013) . To be clear, this is not just because of possible manipulation of the figures by central authorities but because of deception by local authorities intent on doing their own thing in this huge and significantly decentralised country (Hoffmann & Enright 2008;McGregor 2010) .…”