This conference proceedings reflects upon the likely impacts of freer trade on China’s agricultural sector. Based on the results of China’s WTO negotiations with key trading partners, it assesses the compatibility of China’s WTO commitments with domestic policies and the need for specific changes.

Chinese decision-makers are grappling with policy choices that will optimise the gains from China's integration into the international trading system in harmony with social, regional and sustainable development goals.

It is a cliché that China is the world's manufactured goods factory, but most observers are just as certain that China's farmers are a serious burden on growth. Yet China in fact has the makings of an internationally competitive agricultural sector, with the market setting most prices, farmers shifting quickly toward what they produce best, and significant research and development focused on biotechnology and other promising areas. China's trade interests are changing as its farmers become more competitive, and this transformation will have major implications for world trade talks and global economic welfare. This study traces the steps China has taken to make agriculture a winning sector, the evidence that its initiatives are working, and the course the country is likely to take.

Of Political Science, Asia/Pacific Research Center, Stanford University.

In less than three decades, China has grown from playing a negligible role in international trade to being one of the world's largest exporters, a substantial importer of raw materials, intermediate outputs, and other goods, and both a recipient and source of foreign investment. Not surprisingly, China's economic dynamism has generated considerable attention and concern in the United States and beyond. While some analysts have warned of the potential pitfalls of China's rise—the loss of jobs, for example—others have highlighted the benefits of new market and investment opportunities for US firms. Bringing together an expert group of contributors, China's Growing Role in World Trade undertakes an empirical investigation of the effects of China's new status. The essays collected here provide detailed analyses of the microstructure of trade, the macroeconomic implications, sector-level issues, and foreign direct investment. This volume's careful examination of micro data in light of established economic theories clarifies a number of misconceptions, disproves some conventional wisdom, and documents data patterns that enhance our understanding of China's trade and what it may mean to the rest of the world.

China now faces the difficult choice of whether to pursue a food self-sufficiency policy or further integrate its agriculture into the world market. China's choice will have profound implications for the world trading system, as well as for its own economy. At the same time, China needs to reform its land tenure and grain marketing systems. This book examines these majority policy issues using up-to-date information and empirical evidence.

China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) has had profound consequences for the structure of its economy, and there will many more before the full benefits of an open trading regime will be realised. AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SECURITY IN CHINA explains the background to China's WTO accession and links accession to reforms beginning as far back as 1979. The book highlights China's policymakers' decision to move away from protectionism and grain self-sufficiency and illustrates how China's step away from direct participation in the agricultural sector to indirect regulatory involvement and liberalisation could encourage further economic growth. Yet not all economic growth is cost-free. AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SECURITY IN CHINA explores the short-term impacts of WTO accession as well as the mid and long-term implications of greater market involvement at an economy-wide and regional level. Growing divides between coastal and inland regions - and differences in rural and urban growth - will require a better understanding of the consequences of greater market dependency. AGRICULTURE AND FOOD SECURITY IN CHINA adds to the existing knowledge of China's agricultural growth as well as the impacts and interrelationships between WTO accession and China's participation in other regional free trade agreements.