By Ye Xingqing, Research Team on “ Strategic Adjustments of Agriculture in the Context of High-Level Opening-up”, Research Department of Rural Economy, DRC

Research Report, No. 77, 2020 (Total 5821) 2020-4-13

Abstract: When China joined the WTO in 2001, it made the commitment to a relatively high level of opening up in the agricultural sector. Since then, China’s opening up has been further advanced through the signing of bilateral or multilateral regional trade agreements. China’s agricultural sector has maintained a stable development across the board, continuing the upward growth trend, in spite of the high-level openness. But it needs to be noted that with the advancement of industrialization and urbanization drive, the agricultural sector is facing more and more tangible challenges and out of that, two major challenges are as follows. First, the dependency ratio of China’s agriculture on imported agricultural products has become constantly enlarged. The cost and price inversion between domestic and foreign agricultural products and China’s production shortage have both led to pressure on import market. And the increasing labor cost has weakened China’s export competition edge over labor-intensive agricultural products. Second, the domestic support for the agricultural sector has increased rapidly, and some supporting policies are beyond the government capacity. The supporting structure needs to be adjusted and optimized.

Keywords: agriculture, WTO, opening-up, comparative advantages