The Chinese Communist government places a high priority on the development of industry in its national economic plans. Anxious to show advancement, it has published gross values of industrial production for the years prior to 1961 and corresponding indexes. Many of these data are biased and unreliable. In The Rate and Pattern of Industrial Growth in Communist China, Kang Chao carefully reconstructs two sets of industrial production indexes that are more meaningful and reliable. He also lays out the statistical procedures necessary to construct new indexes that reflect fundamental economic...