The purpose of the paper is to explain the determinants of technological adoption and demonstrate the importance of technological change in rice yield growth during China's reform period. Using a unique data set on the nation's rice economy, in the first part of a two stage econometric model, adoption of new technologies (hybrid rice and single/double cropped rice) is shown to be chosen on the basis of two basic factors: the availability of a new technologies and the willingness of producers to adopt them. Treating technology as an endogenous factor, a set of rice supply and derived demand equations is subsequently estimated, and the parameters are used in a decomposition analysis. While institutional and environmental factors are found to be significant detenninants of post-reform productivity increases, technological change has been shown to be the greatest across all periods, and can account for most of the growth in recent years.