The Role of Agriculture in China’s Development: Performance, Determinants of Successes and Future Challenges

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to document the performance of China’s agriculture sector during the People’s Republic era, against the Johnston and Mellor criteria to assess how well the agricultural sector has done. After establishing the background on China’s agricultural past, Sect. 3.2 of the chapter examines the performance of China’s rural economy during the reform era. Section 3.3 presents an analysis of the shifts in the institutional base and policy strategy of reform that have facilitated the performance of the agricultural sector and those that have constrained it since the 1980s, including decollectivisation followed by market liberalization at a later stage, underscoring the sequencing and gradual pacing of reforms unlike the approach adopted by the transition economies in Europe. The chapter concludes with Sect. 3.4, discussing some of the future policy challenges along with the issue of China’s farm size; groundwater management; the subsidy program; the issues of conventional and plant biotechnology research; and biofuels.