Production cotonnière chinoise : forces et faiblesses d'une intégration et d'une adaptation à l'économie de marché

China impacts directly upon the world cotton market as it has become a structural importer in spite of its position of first producing country. The adoption of genetically modified cotton (GMC) at large scale led some external observers to anticipate that Chinese production will increase substantially at the expense of to the demand towards structural cotton-exporting countries. Owing to the negotiations within the WTO Doha Round, the perception of the Chinese cotton power has shifted to criticism of its unfair subsidy policy. Both of these views are debatable and suffer from a lack of insight on the evolution of the cotton production in China. The paper is an attemps to document the debate and to fill that gap.Cotton production in China is located is three main regions, along the Yellow River Valley, the Yangse River Valley and in the Xinjiang Uigur Autonomous Region where cotton production has been launched in the '70s. The fate of this production cannot be disconnected from the general features of the Chinese agriculture.The Chinese agriculture is engaged into a period of great mutation. In spite of high yield level, agricultural activities can no longer ensure sufficient income to farmers. Off-farm activities enable farmers' incomes not to lag further behind the ones of the urban households, but agriculture appears to lack attractiveness, rural areas are being emptied of their working forces, the fate of this agriculture within the forthcoming years seems to be under question. Its shift towards provinces located further from the economically dynamic coastal areas would depend upon the implementation of the recent policy destined to correct income disparities, so far at the expense of rural areas.Cotton is being produced according to the high input/high output approach that benefited from the policy to secure against climatic hazards and economic risks through input subsidy and purchase price guarantee. Since its entrance to WTO, China is no longer providing any direct subsidy to cotton growers. Production intensification nevertheless keeps on and the use of GMC can be regarded as a further stage of this intensification process. This is a matter of reality worth considering before extrapolating the Chinese success in using GMC to other developing countries.The outcome of the intensification process however is hampered by the lack of collective actions among farmers. The farmers' reluctance in getting involved into collective actions impacts negatively upon the profitability of cotton production and can endanger the sustainable use of GMC through undesirable shift of the cotton pest complex.In the short run, it is doubtful that China could reverse its importing position in the cotton world market. This might sound heartening to the cotton exporting countries but not sufficient to prevent them from engaging into measures to increase its competitiveness through productivity gain.