Introducing Chinese private enterprise survey: points and prospects

Purpose This paper aims to introduce the history and major achievement of the Chinese private enterprise survey (CPES), which is one of the most enduring large-scale nationwide sample surveys in China, providing important micro firm-level data for understanding and studying the development of Chinese enterprises and entrepreneurs over the past 26 years. Design/methodology/approach The main body of this paper is based on a bibliometric analysis of all literature using CPES until 2017. Findings This paper discusses problems that users may encounter during data mining. By doing so, it can assist other researchers to get a better understanding of what has been done (e.g. journals, topics, scholars and institutions) and do their research in a more targeted way. Originality/value This paper is the first to provide an overall picture of academic papers in China and abroad that have used the CPES data.