How China's WTO accession affects rural economy in the less-developed regions

This study constructs a regional CGE model of China to analyze the differential regional impacts of China's WTO accession on agricultural production, trade, and farmers' income. The results show that China's WTO accession will generally improve the total welfare but will widen existing gaps among regions and sectors. It is expected that the agricultural sector will suffer if only agricultural trade is liberalized, as cheap imports of agricultural products, particularly grains, will increase and domestic agricultural production and farmers' agricultural income will decline. Full trade liberalization, i.e., lifting trade barriers in both agriculture and non-agriculture will benefit farmers and agriculture at the national level. However, the increase in rural income is still smaller than the increase in urban income, which implies that the rural- urban income gap may be further widened. Furthermore, among the regions, the less-developed rural areas will benefit little or even suffer because their major production activities and income sources are still from agriculture, especially from traditional agricultural activities such as grain production.World Trade Organization. ,Agricultural productivity China. ,Farm income China. ,Trade liberalization China. ,

Farmland holdings, crop planting structure and input usage

This study, based on the data of China's agricultural census of 1997, focuses on the land distribution among rural households and its effects on crop production structure and employment of labor and capital. The Census data show that the size of holdings surprisingly differs among households, and land rental activities has started to play an important role in land allocation. Grain production accounts for 80% of total sown area for each household group, indicating that self-sufficiency in grains production is still an important factor to farmers. Family members are a dominant source for China's agricultural labor force, regardless of the size of land held in each household. Machinery use in crop production is still not popular, while the scale of land held by households has an impact on the use of machinery in crop production. Moreover, the small land holdings of agriculture may lower labor productivity, even though there are more non-agricultural employment activities among these small scale households.Agriculture China Statistics. ,Crops and soil Management. ,Land tenure. ,Rural population. ,China ,TMD ,

Country-level impact of global recession and China’s stimulus package

A dynamic computable general equilibrium model is developed to assess the impact of the recent global recession and the Chinese government’s stimulus package on China’s economic growth. The model is first used to capture the actual sector-level economic growth in 2008 and the possible economic performance in 2009 without the intervention of the Chinese government through its stimulus package. Under this global recession scenario, the GDP growth rate in 2009 falls to 2.9 percent mainly as a result of the sharp drop in exports of manufactured goods, while the agricultural sector is more crisis-resilient. Because export-oriented manufacturing sectors are often import-intensive, the weakened economy is accompanied by a reduction in Chinese firms’ import demand for materials, intermediates, and capital goods. The model also shows that without government intervention, the negative effect of a one-year shock on the Chinese economy would last for many years. Also, over the next five to six years, China is unlikely to replicate its strong economic performance of the past two decades. China’s stimulus package is modeled through increased investment financed by government resources. With additional demand on investment goods, growth in the investment-related production sector is stimulated. Through the cross-sector linkages in a general equilibrium model, the demand for other noncapital goods increases, thus stimulating growth in these sectors. As production of more industrialized sectors starts to grow, so will households’ income and consumption, providing market opportunities for those agricultural and service sectors that mainly produce for the domestic market. Under the stimulus scenario, the Chinese economy is expected to grow 8–10 percent in 2009 and the succeeding years. The growth engine in this case differs from that before 2008: growth is led by domestic demand, while trade still falls significantly in 2009 (instead of the double-digit growth before 2008). Domestic demand-driven stimulus growth creates jobs, and hence it increases income for both urban and rural households. The model is also used to measure the overall gains of the stimulus package by comparing GDP between the two scenarios. Without considering the productivity-enhancing role of public investment as part of the stimulus package (which is important for long-term growth but unlikely to happen in the short run), the cumulative difference of the GDP between the two scenarios over the next seven years is about RMB76 trillion, which is about three times more than the GDP in 2007.China stimulus package, Development strategies, general equilibrium modeling, global financial crisis,

Online Preconcentration and Determination of Trace Amounts of Zinc in Nature Waters

A simple, sensitive, reliable and flexible flow injection spectrophotometric method is proposed for on-line preconcentration and determination of trace amounts of zinc in water. At the presence of Tween-80 in pH 9.3 buffer solutions, the shade of color of Zn (II)-PAN complex is in a linear relation to the zinc amount at the point of the maximum absorption peak of 560 nm. The optimal experimental conditions, including reaction conditions and preconcentration conditions, had been obtained. The linear range of the proposed method was between 2.0 and 360 μg L−1 and the detection limit was 0.42 μg L−1. The relative standard deviation was 3.55% and 2.14% for 5.0 μg L−1 and 50 μg L−1 of zinc standard solution (n = 8). The method had been successfully applied to zinc determination in water samples and the analytical results were satisfactory

A 2007 Social Accounting Matrix for China

This paper documents a 2007 Social Accounting Matrix (SAM) for China. This SAM was constructed for the China CGE model to assess the impact of the 2008-09 global recession shocks and the Chinese government's stimulus policy on China's economic growth. The SAM is constructed using data from various sources including an existing input-output table, national accounts, government budgets, balance of payments, commodity exports and imports, labor employment and wage statistics, household expenditure surveys and agricultural production statistics. Cross-entropy estimation techniques are used to balance the SAM. This SAM is a detailed representation of China’s economy in 2007. It covers 61 production activities and commodity sectors, 4 types of factors (low skilled labor, skilled labor, capital, and land), and 2 representative household (rural and urban) groups. The structural characteristics of China’s economy presented in the SAM would be helpful to better understand the economic linkages. And the SAM also provides an ideal tool for economy-wide impact assessments, such as a SAM-based multiplier analysis and computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling

FARMLAND HOLDINGS, CROP PLANTING STRUCTURE AND INPUT USAGE: AN ANALYSIS OF CHINA'S AGRICULTURAL CENSUS

This study, based on the data of China’s agricultural census of 1997, focuses on the land distribution among rural households and its effects on crop production structure and employment of labor and capital. The Census data show that the size of holdings surprisingly differs among households, and land rental activities has started to play an important role in land allocation. Grain production accounts for 80% of total sown area for each household group, indicating that self-sufficiency in grains production is still an important factor to farmers. Family members are a dominant source for China's agricultural labor force, regardless of the size of land held in each household. Machinery use in crop production is still not popular, while the scale of land held by households has an impact on the use of machinery in crop production. Moreover, the small land holdings of agriculture may lower labor productivity, even though there are more non-agricultural employment activities among these small scale households

HOW CHINA'S WTO ACCESSION AFFECTS RURAL ECONOMY IN THE LESS-DEVELOPED REGIONS: A MULTI-REGION, GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM ANALYSIS

This study constructs a regional CGE model of China to analyze the differential regional impacts of China’s WTO accession on agricultural production, trade, and farmers’ income. The results show that China’s WTO accession will generally improve the total welfare but will widen existing gaps among regions and sectors. It is expected that the agricultural sector will suffer if only agricultural trade is liberalized, as cheap imports of agricultural products, particularly grains, will increase and domestic agricultural production and farmers’ agricultural income will decline. Full trade liberalization, i.e., lifting trade barriers in both agriculture and non-agriculture will benefit farmers and agriculture at the national level. However, the increase in rural income is still smaller than the increase in urban income, which implies that the rural-urban income gap may be further widened. Furthermore, among the regions, the less-developed rural areas will benefit little or even suffer because their major production activities and income sources are still from agriculture, especially from traditional agricultural activities such as grain production