New Estimates of Fixed Investment and Capital Stock for Chinese State Industry

Abstract

Measures of society's stock of fixed assets are necessary for describing production technology, evaluating capital-output ratios and analysing multi-factor productivity. Even in advanced industrial economies, existing series of fixed capital incorporate many weaknesses and arbitrary assumptions; in low-income nations, these problems are often severe. China is no exception. While recognizing the inherent difficulty of compiling capital stock estimates for an economy in which prices have long deviated from scarcity values, this article uses currently available materials to derive an improved time series of fixed capital stock for independent accounting units within Chinese state industry. Our objective is to produce new series that adhere as closely as possible to the standard national accounting concepts of gross domestic fixed capital formation and gross reproducible fixed assets. Despite the difficulties mentioned below, we believe that our new series are distinctly superior to existing figures for the analysis of capital deepening, multi-factor productivity and other aspects of Chinese state industry requiring estimates of fixed capital stock.