Abstract
Western economists who wish to study economic conditions in Communist China are plagued both by the quantity and the quality of economic statistics made available by the Chinese Communist authorities. Quantitatively, the meagerness of statistical data makes the task of serious research difficult. Qualitatively, most Western economists have little confidence in these statistics as reliable representations of the actual situations. This paper will examine the general reliability of the physical output data of industrial commodities published by the Chinese Communist authorities. Industrial output data have been selected for our purpose for two reasons. First, great emphasis has been given to industrial production in the economic plans. Second, the Chinese Communist authorities have released relatively abundant data concerning industrial production so that it is possible to conduct certain empirical tests, as will be seen later, to determine the general reliability of the output figures for certain commodities.
