How Do Firms in the Private Sector Perceive Constraints to Doing Business in China?

ABSTRACT This paper studies perceptions of business constraints in China using rich firm-level data from the 2005 and 2012 World Bank Enterprise Surveys conducted jointly by the China National Bureau of Statics and the World Bank. In addition, we focus on the variations of perceptions across foreign and indigenous Chinese firms. Our results show that there exist significant differences in perceptions between foreign and domestic firms in China in the 2005 survey, but such differences are no long present in the 2012 survey. Our analysis also identifies several elements perceived as more severe constraints by both domestic and foreign firms.