Estimation of China's investment in ICT assets and accumulated ICT capital stock

David Liang, Harry X Wu and Kyoji Fukao

No 833, IDE Discussion Papers from Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO)

Abstract: Despite the extraordinary impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on the Chinese economy, no systematic information is provided on ICT investment by Chinese official statistics. We make the first attempt to estimate such investment using China’s total investment in equipment by industry controlled by China’s national accounts, constructed by the CIP (China Industrial Productivity) Project, and the relationship between the ICT equipment investment and ICT service intermediate input, as observed in the Japanese economy. We show that over the entire period from 1978 to 2018, China’s investment in the ICT equipment grew by 21.8 percent per annum, which was nearly twice the investment in non-ICT equipment. The share of the ICT investment in China’s nominal GDP peaked in 2002 at 2.7 percent, then declined to approximately 1 percent in the recent years. Similarly, the ICT investment share in the nominal gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) peaked in 2002 at 7.7 percent and then declined to 2.4 percent in 2018, largely attributable to the government’s unprecedented investment in infrastructure to sustain growth. By 2018, China’s ICT intensity, measured as the share of the ICT equipment in the total equipment stock, had reached 10.6 percent, approximately 65 percent that of Japan (16.4 percent in 2015) and 71 percent that of the US (15.0 percent in 2017). In sectoral comparisons, we show that China’s service sector is more-ICT intensive (17.3) than its industrial sector (5.4), a pattern similar to, but with a narrower spread than that in Japan (25.8 vs. 4.5 in 2015), and the US (21.1 vs. 3.8 in 2017).

Keywords: information and communication technologies (ICTs); ICT investment; ICT capital stock; input-output tables. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C82 E22 E24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in IDE Discussion Paper = IDE Discussion Paper, No. 833. 2022-03

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