Has the Chinese economy passed the Lewis turning point?
There are a number of studies related to whether China's economy has passed through the Lewis turning point or not. However, definitive conclusions have yet to be obtained. Some studies argue that China's economy has not yet reached the Lewis turning point, while some studies claim that China's economy has crossed it already. In this study, we estimate the marginal productivity of labor in China's primary industry based on province level data and suggest a different proxy for the survival wage compared to previous studies. We discovered that China's economy has passed through the Lewis turning point around 2002–2004. A similar conclusion was also obtained by relating the substitutive relation of labor and capital inputs in China's agricultural production.