This study is a two-stage survey that the World Bank conducted with the Enterprise Survey Organization of the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics. The first stage of the survey, carried out in 2001, covered 300 firms in each of five cities—Beijing, Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Tianjin—for a total of 1500 firms. The survey collected detailed information on different aspects of corporate governance, financing, firm-government relations, innovation, technology, and labor. Most quantitative questions covered the period 1997–2000; most qualitative questions covered only the time of the survey.
The second stage of the survey, conducted in 2001–2002, covered the same set of firms, though a small percentage had disappeared since the first survey. The questionnaire covered investment climate constraints on the establishment, infrastructure and services, finance, labor relations, sales and supplies, business-government relations, conflict resolution and the legal environment, crime, capacity, innovation, and learning.
Firm-level surveys have been conducted since 1998 by different units within the World Bank. Since 2005-06, most data collection efforts have been centralized within the Enterprise Analysis Unit (FPDEA), which implements Enterprise Surveys across all geographic regions.