Understanding agricultural growth in China: An international perspective

This paper studies the evolution of the agricultural sector in the Chinese economy, with a comparison to a number of selected economies that are at different stages of economic development. It shows that China’s unprecedented agricultural growth comparing to other emerging and developed countries was mainly driven by its world-beating productivity improvement, resulting from a series of fundamental reforms that have been undertaken in the Chinese agricultural sector since 1978. Despite the remarkable achievement, however, agriculture is playing a diminishing role in the growing Chinese economy, including declining agricultural employment. The paper illustrates that, as in other developed countries, the decline trend in China is an outcome of market forces in balancing various demands and supplies for goods and services as income rises. The research results will have important implications for further policy designs that seek to maintain a healthy agricultural growth in China in the future.