This statistical dataset updates and expands the coverage of an earlier publication -- Agricultural Statistics of the People's Republic of China, 1949-86. The report compiles much of the important agricultural data that China's State Statistical Bureau (SSB) reported for 1949-90. It forms a current agricultural data base for China using statistics from a wide variety of official, primarily Chinese language, sources from the People's Republic of China (PRC). Because this report is restricted t o official Chinese data, it is not necessarily consistent with data used by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). While USDA has used official data from China for more recent years, not all of USDA's historical series have been revised to reflect t he newly released historical statistical series, particularly when the historical data provided by China are incomplete.
This dataset provides a relatively complete national historical series for 1949-90, along with a provincial series for 1979-90, for China's area and production of most major crops. Other agricultural data available from official sources have also been covered in this report, including national and provincial livestock production, selected national series on production and use of major inputs, national and provincial land use and population data, national and provincial procurement prices, national and provincial consumption statistics, and major agricultural imports and exports by commodity. However, other important agricultural data, such as commodity by country trade statistics, detailed national and provincial income data and national and provincial level commodity prices are either not yet available or are beyond the scope of this report.
During the 1950's, the Government of the People's Republic of China published a great deal of statistical data. The economic disasters of the late 1950's and the political and social turmoil during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), however, led to a 20-year period during which no official statistical data were released. After 1976 when the emergence of economic growth as an important priority of the leadership, China began rebuilding its statistical system. For a brief overview of China's rural statistical system, see Planning and Statistical Systems in China's Agriculture referenced in the Suggested Readings section of this report. That publication also contains a timetable listing dates when various statistical reports are scheduled to be published and includes translations of 12 annual statistical and 3 periodic report forms.
In June 1979, the SSB released a state plan fulfillment communique describing the successes and failures of the state economic plan, the first in 20 years, and in August 1980, the first official statistical yearbook was published. Since then, a wide range of agricultural, economic, statistical, encyclopedic yearbooks, and other official statistical books, pamphlets and economic plan communiques have been published annually (see Suggested Readings and References sections).
Although China has revised some of its earlier figures (primarily on grain production) since data publication resumed in 1979, most of the data remains unchanged from yearbook to yearbook. This suggests that the SSB has carefully scrutinized these statistics and considers them to be the best they can currently produce.
China initially published many of the series included in this report for only a few key years. Each subsequent yearbook has added data not available in earlier years; so gaps in some series have already been filled. China probably will eventually publish more of the important data needed to analyze production, consumption and trade in the agricultural sector.
A wide variety of data are collected by SSB enumerators every year. The SSB directs the surveys, prints the survey forms, and trains the survey personnel. The surveys are used to collect data on rural population, labor force conditions, crop production, livestock output, household income and expenditure and commodity prices. Readers interested in the specific survey methodologies employed by the statistical agencies should see Tuan, Francis C., and Frederick W. Crook. Planning and Statistical Systems in China's Agriculture. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Foreign Agricultural Economic Report No. 181, April, 1983.
For further information on this dataset, visit the Economic Research Services WWW Site .
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