China - Government Consumption

The China Statistical Yearbook is compiled by the National Bureau of Statistics, China (NBS). It is an annual statistics publication which covers very comprehensive annual data at the National level. 

The Statistical Yearbook release updates the following main economic categories: employment, gross domestic product, demographic, energy, foreign direct investment, retail sales, construction, government finance and house price index data. The national data exclude Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, because statistically, they are three independent regions.

Active:

• Industrial classification: GB/T 4754-2011
• Benchmarks: 7th National Population Census, 4th Economic Census
• Measurements:
  • Unitary count (#)
  • 10 thousand units (10 Ths. #)
  • Chinese yuan (CNY)
  • 100 million Chinese yuan (100 Mil. CNY)
  • 100 million kilowatt hours (100 Mil. Kwh)
  • 10 thousand tons (10 Ths. Tons)
  • Areal price (CNY per M2)
  • 100 million cubic meters (100 Mil. M3)
  • Percent (%)
  • Ratio (%)
  • Moving-base index relative to previous year (Previous Year=100)
• Adjustment: Not applicable
• Native frequency: Annual
• Start date: As early as 1949
• Geo coverage:
  • Country
  • 31 of 34 first-level divisions (ICHN_^^)

Predecessors:

• Employment by A*3 industry - {1978, 1985, 1997) to 2010 ("_10")
• GB/T 4754-2002 and 3rd Economic Census

Construction

Construction enterprises data are collected in accordance with the Reporting Form System of Construction Statistics stipulated by the National Bureau of Statistics. The annual reporting forms on construction statistics are designed in accordance with local situations for comprehensive collection by statistical bureaus of each province, autonomous region and municipality and conveyance level by level upwards. Data on prospecting and designing institutions and their personnel are provided by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, based on the requirements on the annual reporting specified in the Statistical Reporting Form System of Prospecting and Designing stipulated by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development

Population

The national population census is conducted in the year ending with 0; the national 1 percent population sample survey is conducted in the year ending with 5; sample surveys on population changes are conducted in the rest of the years which cover about 1 per thousand of the total population of the country. The sample survey on population change takes the whole nation as the population and each province, autonomous region or municipality as sub-populations, and the stratified multi-stage systematic PPS cluster sampling scheme is used.

• Years ending with 0: eg. 2020, 2010, 2000, 1990 and so on… These are when the population census is conducted and often the numbers are ‘nil’ or actual census population number in persons, because they are Census data.
• Years ending with 5: eg. 2015, 2005.. These are conducted using the national 1 percent population sample survey method.
• Rest of years… These are conducted on ‘sample surveys on population changes’

Real estate

It includes information on investments completed during the period on a consolidated basis, in residential & office buildings and others as well as floor space of buildings under construction, completed and others. The data are provided in millions of CNY while the floor space is provided in m². Data on trans-provincial projects are provided by various departments under the State Council. Data on investments in fixed assets by individuals in rural areas are provided by the Department of Rural Social and Economic Survey of the NBS through its rural social and economic survey. Other data on investments in fixed assets are from surveys conducted by the Department of Investment and Construction Statistics of the NBS.

All data on investments in fixed assets are collected by the system of reporting form with complete enumeration, except data on individual investments in fixed assets in rural areas, which are collected through sample surveys.

Employment

The annual employment data for China is published by the National Bureau of Statistics in its annual statistical year book. This publication covers  the basic conditions of China’s labour economy, including main labour statistics on the whole country and 31 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government, such as the economically active population, number of employed persons, staff and workers, number of registered unemployed persons in urban areas, total wage bills and average wages of staff and workers and the changes in index.

The method of survey is a complete reporting form system from lower-level statistical bureaus to higher level statistical bureaus is used in the labour statistics. The Sampling Survey on Labour Force are conducted using sampling methods. Statistics on training, employment, private enterprises and self-employed individuals are collected and compiled on basis of administrative registering records.

Employment by sector

The employment by sector (1978 to 2002) data are wage workers and staff and do not include private institution and self employed workers. 

The active employment by sector (2003 to present) are number of employed persons in urban units. 

The two sets of employment by sector data are not directly comparable due to the difference in methodology standards as we ll as industry classification. 

The national figures are revised annually and adjustments are made based on the lower level data (such as provincial levels), whilst the provincial level data are published one period each year and no revisions are captured. As a result, there are minor differences observed when comparing the national and provincial level data.

Final consumption expenditure

This  refers to the total expenditure of resident units for purchases of goods and services from both the domestic economic territory and abroad to meet the needs of material, cultural and spiritual life. It does not include the expenditure of non-resident units on consumption in the economic territory of the country. The final consumption expenditure is broken down into household consumption expenditure and government consumption expenditure.

• Household Consumption Expenditure - refers to the total expenditure of resident households on the final consumption of goods and services. In addition to the consumption of goods and services bought by the households directly with money, the household consumption expenditure also includes expenditure on goods and services obtained by the households in other ways, i.e. the so-called imputed consumption expenditure, which includes the following: (a) the goods and services provided to households by employers in the form of payment in kind and transfer in kind; (b) goods and services produced and consumed by the households themselves, in which the services refer to the owner-occupied housing and services offered by paid family employees; (c) financial intermediate services provided by financial institution.
• Government Consumption Expenditure - refers to the consumption expenditure spent for the provision of public services provided by the government to the whole country and the net expenditure on the goods and services provided by the government to households free of charge or at reduced prices. The former equals to the output value of the government services minus the value of operating income obtained by the government departments. The latter equals to the market value of the goods and services provided by the government free of charge or at reduced prices to the households minus the value received by the government from the households.

Moody's Analytics supplements

We compute government balance.

The China statistical yearbook is release annually, and data revision of the previous years would be covered in the latest publication.

The preliminary release is announced in early February through a press release on the NBS website. For example, the 2011 annual numbers (main top line only) were published on the 22 of February 2012 (citation) Data dissemination are brief and provide no history, it includes: GDP, CPI, Industrial Product, Industrial Profit, Fixed Asset Investment, Real Estate data, Domestic Trade, Foreign Trade, Foreign Direct Investment, Transport and Tourism, Monetary, Population.

First revision in May: Between May to July, there is a revision that gets published only in a hardcopy. This is not the yearbook.

Final revision in September: The hardcopy of China Yearbook is available.

Between December and January: The online version of China Yearbook is made available for public.

Benchmark revisions:

• Demographic datasets to the National Population Census
• Labor datasets to a 10% sample within the National Population Census
• GDP and retail sales to the Economic Census

Regional data in this Yearbook are prepared by the statistical bureaus of the provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. The sum of the regional data is not equal to the national data due to the decentralized accounting approach.

Population

In the year of the census, i.e 1990, 2000, 2010 there will be missing data for the sample population by region.

Data breaks

For employment, there is a break in method from 2019 due to the benchmarking to the 4th Economic Census, so active series contain a "[Break in method from 2019]" notation.

For retail sales, there is a break in method from 2017 due to the benchmarking to the 4th Economic Census, so active series contain a "[Break in method from 2017]" notation. For the national series, the break started from as early as 1992 because total retail sales of consumer goods before 1992 referred to total retail sales of social commodities.