Comparative labour productivity performance in Chinese manufacturing, 1952-1997: An ICOP PPP approach

This study joins the debate of whether Chinese manufacturing has experienced a significant catch-up with or a process of falling behind the world’s advanced economies. It calculates a new set of industry-of-origin China-US PPPs for major manufacturing industries at 1987 prices. Then using a newly constructed data set, it derives China’s comparative labour productivity level in manufacturing for 1952-97. The results show that China’s comparative labour productivity increased from about 3.0 in 1952 to 7.6 in 1997 (USA=100), but with a long stagnation at around 4.5 between 1958 and 1990. A clear catch-up process has been observed since the 1990s when China’s market-oriented reform deepened.