Abstract
Previous studies of productivity change in Chinese industry show that stagnating productivity has persisted into the 1980s in spite of China's reform efforts. Once non-industrial resources are excluded from published factor input data and fixed assets are corrected for inflation, China's state industry shows a positive rate of multifactor productivity growth over the period 1953–1985 with productivity accelerating from the late 1970s. Weights used to combine the input data are obtained from estimates of Cobb-Douglas and translog production functions rather than, as in most other studies, from factor income shares or arbitrary weights.