Sustainable food production and food security are always challenging issues in China. This paper constructs a multi-element two-level constant-elasticity-of-substitution (CES) model to assess technological progress in, and its contribution to, japonica rice production in China. The results show that the speed of technological progress in the production of japonica rice on average was 0.44% per annum in 1985-2013, and technological progress has contributed significantly to the growth of japonica rice production in China. Robustness checks show that the results appear to be sensitive to which sub-sample is used. Labour and some other inputs are found to be significant but negative, especially during the middle sampling period of 1994-2006 and in eastern and western regions. This has important policy implications on the impact of rural-to-urban migration and farmers' human development. © 2018 by the authors.