Abstract Employing the panel data (from 1978 to 2012) at the provincial level in China and the SBM Directional distance function model which is non-radial and non-angular, and absorbing the essential idea of Global Malmquist Productivity Index, the paper puts forward a new evaluation model called the SBM-Global Malmquist Productivity Index, by which accounts and decomposes China’s grain growth rate of total factor productivity. The study shows that the traditional Malmquist Index tends to “technology retrogression” compared with Global Malmquist Index, which “passively” increases the measurement of the grain growth rate of total factor productivity. And secondly, China’s total factor productivity exhibits obvious unbalance in different regions, the west region shows the highest growth level, the eastern region the second, and the central region the lowest. Moreover, our grain growth rate is on the rise and fluctuates in U shape, which mainly dues to the frontier technology progress and not for the motivation of technical efficiency.
2016, Vol. 33 
