China's entry into WTO has a profound impact on China's agriculture

Introduction: China's agriculture will face great challenges in the next decade, not only because of the recent WTO accession agreement, but also because of the adjustment required by economic growth This is the view of an American university professor In a recent speech to Chicago farmers, D gale Johnson, Honorary Professor of economic studies at the University of Chicago, said that the agricultural trade agreement between China and the United States would not cause major problems in China's agriculture The WTO accepted China as a member on November 10 and Taiwan as a member on November 11 According to the WTO agreement, China's trade barriers will be weakened Professor Johnson said that although China has been implementing high import tariffs, they are often not implemented Imports are conducted through state-owned companies, and agricultural products are mainly through COFCO Because import costs exceed domestic prices, tariffs are often negative Professor 7gj Johnson said that at present, due to the low world grain price, the international grain price is the lowest level in more than 100 years, perhaps the lowest level in history According to China's current exchange rate, corn prices are higher than import prices In addition, China is under great pressure from the United States to remove barriers to soybean imports, while China's tariffs on soybean imports are only 3% In recent years, China has been increasing imports of soybeans Professor Johnson expects China's soybean imports to continue to rise Although this will damage the interests of Chinese farmers, it will not bring disastrous consequences Resources will be transferred to corn, which will increase China's corn exports According to Johnson's analysis, the tariff rate quota of soybean does not protect the soybean farmers in China, but only the refined oil producers The crushing profits of domestic refineries are protected, but the price of domestic soybeans is determined by the cost of soybean imports, not by the price of soyoil 7gj Johnson said that China's adjustment to economic growth will far exceed the adjustment needed to increase trade The professor predicted that China's agricultural employment population would be reduced by 60% or even more in the next 30 years, indicating that it would be reduced at a rate of 3% every year, which is not high compared with that of Japan, South Korea, Denmark or even the United States In terms of per capita consumption, Johnson said that China's income gap between urban and rural areas is the largest in the world, with a ratio of 3.5 to 1 7gj with the transfer of China from agriculture and the growth of labor force, Johnson expects to increase the number of non-agricultural jobs by 12 million to 1.5 million every year in the next 30 years The location of these jobs depends on government policy One option is to move industrial enterprises to small towns and let most workers come to work from the countryside This will require a change in the credit system and a large amount of investment in small towns to ensure an increase in the employment rate Professor 7gj Johnson also believes that rural areas need to be made more attractive workplaces by improving road traffic or bus facilities In order to make rural areas more attractive, we need to make rural areas have urban facilities, such as TV, refrigerators, washing machines and running water At present, the per capita electricity consumption in rural areas is only one ninth of that in urban areas In rural China, the cost of electricity is five times that of cities, and it is not stable Half of the villages do not have running water, and many villages do not have TV reception because they are too far away from the TV station The average per capita cultivated land in rural China is less than 1.5 acres, and there are 200 to 250 million agricultural workers (real farmers) in China In recent years, the per capita daily income for grain production has been $1 If the return of agricultural labor is relatively higher than that of urban wages, then China must improve the efficiency of labor production In the next 30 years, the growth rate must reach 500%, or 5.5 percentage points every year If the productivity growth rate of rural labor force is 1% higher than that of urban labor force every year, if the actual agricultural price is not reduced, the difference of consumption will be reduced by one third, from 3.5:1 to 2.4:1 However, the actual agricultural price may decrease Therefore, Professor Johnson concluded that if we want to reduce the income gap between urban and rural areas, the production efficiency of rural labor force needs to be higher than that of non-agricultural economy 7gj (author:) to feed Weibo to: