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| In-depth Analyses |
| How reliable are (population) statistics from China? |
| The history of (population) statistics in modern China |
Tables & Charts |
| In her book China's
Changing Population, Judith Banister vividly described the history of China's
statistical system since 1949 (Banister, 1987). Her analysis is still relevant today,
because it reminds us that for more than 30 years - between 1949 and the early 1980s -
statistical data was an instrument of political propaganda and manipulation or not
availble at all. This lack of reliable statistical information not only led to some
embarrassing misinterpretations of China's development in the West, it also hurt the
capacity of China's ruling elite to obtain an unbiased view of what was going on in the
country. Basically, we can distinguish six phases in the development of modern China's
statistical system. |
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| Phase One:
1952 - 1957 |
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During the First
Five-Year Plan, China made some progress in introducing a modern statistical system. The
State Statistical Bureau, established in 1952, began to collect and publish economic and
demographic statistics to monitor and control the planned economy. In the early years of
the Republic, China's leaders obviously considered statistics useful for demonstrating the
superiority of the communist system. At that time, it was not so much intentional
manipulation of data as the lack of adequate methods and properly trained personnel that
threatened the validity of the statistics. The State Statistical Bureau was not only
purified of bourgeois elements, but also of competent statisticians trained before 1949.
The government also failed to introduce the principle of independence between statistical
reporting and economic or social control. Communist cadres and local leaders were
primarily responsible for collecting statistical information, an arrangement that was the
basis of massive data manipulation in later years.
It is not surprising that the first Chinese population census from 1953 produced only few
valid results. The processing of detailed results obviously overwhelmed the technically
inexperienced statisticians. The policy of suppressing official statistics also started at
this time. Some of the results of the 1953 census were published only decades later. |
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| Phase Two:
1958 - 1961 |
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When the communist
rule of China approached the end of its first decade, the gap between its plans and
reality had widened so much that it was necessary to implement some drastic measures. If
the statistics did not show the great success of the communist system, the statistics had
to be changed. The Central Statistical Bureau and its director were criticized, and
communist party cadres became responsible at all levels for reporting essential data.
Politics took command over the statistical system of China, which began to disintegrate.
When Mao Zedong launched the fierce economic campaign for rapid industrialization in the
Great Leap Forward, the crippled statistical system reported what the leaders wanted to
hear. The famine during this Great Leap Forward was partly the result of grossly inflated
agricultural production statistics, which lulled the national leaders into self confidence
and prevented the timely implementation of crisis relief efforts. |
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| Phase Three:
1961 - 1966 |
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In 1961 a brief period
of reform and reconstruction started with the appointment of professional statisticians as
heads of the State Statistical Bureau. Shocked by the disaster of the Great Leap Forward,
Chinese politicians obviously wanted greater autonomy and professional competence in the
statistical system. Zhou Enlai spearheaded these efforts by explicitly forbidding party
and government departments to change statistical figures. The freedom did not last long.
Only a few years later the State Statistical Bureau was accused of
"revisionism." These accusations prepared the ground for the destruction of
China's central statistical system during the Cultural Revolution. |
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| Phase Four:
1966 - 1983 |
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The darkest chapter in
the statistical system of modern China started with the Cultural Revolution in 1966. In an
effort to "purify" the communist system, intellectuals and professionals,
including statisticians, were criticized, punished, and removed from their work. Thousands
were ordered to perform hard physical labor in rural areas. The Central Statistical Bureau
was practically closed down. Large amounts of statistical material were burned. Only after
the death of Mao in 1976 and the imprisonment of the Gang of Four, was statistical work
slowly resumed. However, almost nothing was published in subsequent years and the
statisticians were extremely careful not to come into conflict with the party line. |
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| Phase Five:
1983 - 1987 |
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The year 1984 marks a
watershed for China's (population) statistics. In that year, a new national statistics law
took effect, which for the first time in modern China provided a legal basis for a system
of national statistics. It gave the State Statistical Bureau and its provincial branches
responsibility for collecting all kinds of statistics, making it possible to standardize
information gathering, monitor quality, and introduce modern methods of sampling and data
processing. The law explicitly forbids all political interference with the statistical
data, especially the frequent practice of local or regional cadres to revise unpleasant
statistical figures.
In 1983, the State Statistical Bureau for the first time released some detailed data from
the 1953 and 1964 censuses, providing essential information for analyzing the validity of
the 1982 census. A wealth of population data was released in subsequent years,
particularly from the 1982 census, but also from previous censuses and surveys for which
the records were still available. In this period, for the first time foreign scholars had
access to detailed statistical information, including population data by age, sex, and
province, and annual mortality and fertility estimates by age and sex. These data made it
possible for demographers to reconstruct the demographic history of the People's Republic
of China, including the famine-related deaths during the Great Leap Forward (see, e.g.,
Ashton et al., 1984; Peng, 1987; Banister, 1987). The traumatic consequences can still be
seen in official Chinese population statistics (see Figure 1). |
Figure 1 |
| Phase Six:
Since 1987 |
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Since the late 1980s,
when China began its policy of economic reforms and opening up to the outside world, there
has been a "golden age" of (population) statistics in China. A large amount of
population data is now published, most of it available to foreign researchers. For
instance, the 1982 and 1990 censuses, which are generally considered highly reliable data
sources on the demography of China, were published in great detail; many tables from
the 1990 census are even available in electronic form on CD-ROM. Banister and others have
conducted detailed analyses on the reliability of the last two Chinese censuses. They
found, for instance, that age reporting was exceptionally accurate, especially for a
developing rural country (Fang, 1990, 1991; Zhang, Sai et al., 1990). |
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Revision 2.0 (First revision published in 1999)
- Copyright © 2011 by Gerhard K. Heilig. All rights reserved. (First revision: Copyright © 1999 by IIASA.) |
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