A transparent and comprehensive statistical system in China would provide an important basis for enabling a better understanding of the country. This paper focuses on energy intensity (El), which is one of the most important indicators of China. It firstly reviews China's GDP and energy statistics, showing that China has made great improvements in recent years. The means by which El data are released and adjusted are then explained. It shows that El data releases do not provide complete data for calculating El and constant GDP, which may reduce policy transparency and comprehensiveness. This paper then conducts an El calculation method that is based on official sources and that respects the data availability of different data release times. It finds that, in general, China's El statistics can be considered as reliable because most of the results generated by author's calculations match the figures in the official releases. However, two data biases were identified, which may necessitate supplementary information on related constant GDP values used in the official calculation of El data. The paper concludes by proposing short- and long-term measures for improving El statistics to provide a transparent and comprehensive El indicator. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.