About EPS Data Platform

EPS Data Platform

The EPS Data Platform (EPS China Statistics, in the China Data Online series; Chinese: EPS数据平台) is a Beijing-based statistical data service providing time-series statistics on China's economy and society. It assembles dozens of thematic databases sourced from national, industry and regional statistical organisations into a single analytical platform offering data retrieval, processing, analysis, forecasting and visualisation, in Chinese and English versions. University libraries around the world license it as a primary route into Chinese official statistics — the numbers behind the world's second-largest economy, organised so that researchers can actually use them.

What the platform contains

The University of California San Diego's research guide gives the platform's measure as of November 2017: the EPS Data Platform includes 41 China databases sourced from industrial, regional and national organisations, covering various subjects, industries and fields and all regions of China, and contains over 1.2 million basic and combined statistical indicators in time series, with a yearly increment of more than 30 million numeric data values. The founding description for this profile similarly records dozens of thematic databases and more than 1.2 million statistical indicators as of 2017.

Time series are the operative concept. An EPS indicator is not a single number but a run of numbers across years — output, prices, population, trade, energy, education — drawn from the statistical yearbooks and bulletins of the organisations that publish them. Assembling those runs consistently, across sources whose formats and classifications shift over decades, is the platform's core labour and core value.

The census databases

The University of British Columbia's guide documents the platform's census component in detail. EPS China Data's census section comprises six topical databases of China census data beginning with the First Census of 1953: the China Agriculture Census Database; the China Basic Units Census Database; the China Census and Population Sampling Survey Database; the China Economic Census Database; the China Industrial Census Database; and the China Tertiary Industry Census Database. Coverage begins with the 1953 census and additional census data is added as it becomes available.

For historical and demographic research this is a distinctive asset: China's censuses are among the largest data-collection exercises on earth, and their published results are otherwise scattered across decades of print volumes. In EPS they are selectable indicator by indicator, in one interface, alongside the annual statistical series.

The census component also shows how the platform handles China's statistical geography. Census results are published for national, provincial and lower levels, and the six databases separate the great enumeration exercises by subject — agriculture, basic units (the register of organisations and enterprises), population and sampling surveys, the economy as a whole, industry, and tertiary industry — so that a user studying, for example, the evolution of China's industrial establishment counts can follow one census family's series across successive enumerations rather than reconstructing it from separate print publications. UBC's guide notes the practical outputs again in this context: charts and maps can be created within the databases, and results formatted and downloaded as statistics, images and map files. For population and economic geography, the map output is not decoration; regional comparison is the research question itself.

Growth is continuous rather than static. The yearly increment of more than 30 million numeric data values recorded by UC San Diego's guide reflects the annual rhythm of China's statistical publishing: each new round of yearbooks and bulletins extends existing series and adds new indicators, and the platform's value to subscribers compounds accordingly. A database bought for the 2010s series remains the same address for the 2020s series, which is precisely why libraries license it as standing infrastructure rather than as a one-time purchase.

Tools: retrieval, analysis, forecasting, visualisation

EPS is an analytical platform, not a document archive. UC San Diego's guide lists its functions: data retrieval, processing, analysis, forecasting, visualisation display and data export. UBC's guide adds the output practicalities: data can be individually selected and downloaded in various formats — statistics in Excel, charts as JPEG images, and maps in Excel, PDF and JPEG — and the databases allow creation of charts and maps as well as formatting and simple analysis. The platform's interface address in library guides is its OLAP system (olap.epsnet.com.cn), reflecting the online analytical processing design: users pivot across region, time and indicator dimensions rather than downloading fixed tables.

The practical consequence is a change in research workflow. A scholar studying, say, industrial output by province over thirty years can extract one consistent series in minutes, chart it, map it and export it for modelling — work that from print yearbooks alone would take days of transcription, with the transcription errors to match.

Sources and authority

The platform's authority derives from its sources: national, industry and regional statistical organisations — the official statistical system whose yearbooks and bulletins are the primary record of China's economy and society. EPS does not originate the statistics; it aggregates, standardises and republishes them in usable form, as library guides make clear by classing it among data and statistics sources for Chinese studies. That distinction matters for citation practice: researchers cite the underlying statistical source, and use EPS as the access and processing layer that made the numbers retrievable.

The breadth of sourcing — national series alongside industry and regional ones, covering all regions of China — is what permits cross-checking and regional comparison inside one system, rather than across incompatible provincial publications.

English and Chinese versions

EPS China Statistics has both English and Chinese versions, per UC San Diego's guide. The English version is the feature that makes the platform a global research tool rather than only a domestic one: indicator names, database structures and outputs are accessible to researchers who do not read Chinese, opening China's official statistics to direct use in international scholarship and analysis. Its presence in the database lists of universities such as UC San Diego, UBC and SOAS University of London — whose Chinese studies guides list EPS among their statistical e-resources — documents that international adoption.

Who uses EPS and for what

The licensed user base is academic libraries worldwide, and through them the economists, demographers, geographers, political scientists, business researchers and historians who study China quantitatively. Typical uses include building provincial panel datasets, tracing industrial and energy trends, analysing census demography back to 1953, and sourcing the official figures behind market and policy analysis. Because the platform adds more than 30 million data values a year, it functions as a living statistical infrastructure rather than a fixed historical archive: each year's new yearbooks extend the series existing users already rely on.

Position among China data services

EPS occupies the statistical end of China's information-agency spectrum. Where other services in this category sell news, prices or judgement, EPS sells the official numerical record itself, made workable: 41-plus databases, over a million indicators, census depth to 1953, analytical tooling, and bilingual access. In a research ecosystem where China's data is simultaneously abundant and difficult — published voluminously but across fragmented sources — that aggregation is a genuine information service, and the reason libraries on several continents pay for it.

Access and official website

The EPS Data Platform's official website is epsnet.com.cn, with the analytical system accessed via its OLAP interface. Access is by institutional licence, typically through university and research libraries. For this directory, the EPS Data Platform is recorded as a Beijing, China statistical data agency in the China Data Online tradition.