Prefecture-Level Statistics as a Source of Data for Research into China's Regional Development

The complexity of China's regional economy requires the development of new data bases with a high degree of disaggregation. This paper introduces a prefecture-level data base which has been created from the published data dispersed across the provincial yearbooks of the PRC. The validity of the data and their possible significance is discussed. We provide a survey of currently available data categories which are consistent across time and space. We give some comments on possible consequences for assessing regional development, for example, with regard to inter- and intra-regional disparities