عملکرد بهره وری نیروی کار تطبیقی چین در تولید، 1952-1997: جبران عقب ماندگی و یا سقوط از پشت؟

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 purchasing power parities (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 1952–1997. 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 period of stagnation at around 4.5 between 1958 and 1990. A clear catch-up process has been observed since the beginning of 1990s when China's market-oriented reform deepened.