The aim of this paper is to analysis the growth and technological progress of rice production in three northeastern provinces of China, which comprise a major area for the production of Japonica rice, for the period of 1980-1998. Cobb-Douglas production function and other statistical analyses are used for this purpose. The main results are as follows: 1) Growth of rice production in the northeastern provinces was contributed to by the spread of cultivating area, and the growth of yield per

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... re. In the period analyzed, the former factor was greater than the latter but was decreasing gradually with time. 2) The growth of rice yield per hectare can be explained by the increase of traditional inputs and the technological progress. According to our estimated Cobb-Douglas production function and growth accounting analysis, the contribution of traditional inputs to the growth of yield, such as labor, fertilizer, farm machinery and animal labor, and so on was-18.6%, 30.2%, 21.0% and 8.5% respectively, while the contribution of technological progress, such as HYV and advanced cultivation techniques was35,4%and 13.4%. 3) In the 1990s, HYV adoption reached its peak and then declined, and so did its contribution to the growth of yield. Instead of HYV, the adoption of the thinly transplanting technique, which was introduced from Japan, contributed the most(47.3%)among the various forms of input. In the 1980-1998 period, conventional forms of input contributed to the growth of rice yield in those regions by 41.0%, while technological progress contributed by 48.8%.