Growth in China's Grain Production 1978–1997: A Disaggregate Analysis

This paper analyzes China’s grain production during 1978–97. Using disaggregate approach to explore disparities in growth patterns of respective crops, the study reveals that during this period, almost all the increased output can be attributed to the growth of rice, wheat and corn. The contribution of other crops as a whole was almost negligible. The disparities in growth patterns were partly the result of crop adjustments, induced by changes in food demand, and dominated by substitutions of high-yield crops for low-yield crops. In this process, the adoption of new technologies played an important role. Varying opportunity costs of grain production in different areas also affected growth patterns of respective crops. The trend in China’s grain production in the past two decades suggests that the adherence to grain self-sufficiency has become not only increasingly costly but also unnecessary.     

Constraints in Access to and Demand for Rural Credit: Evidence from Uganda

Abstract: Like in most developing countries, Uganda's financial sector is largely underdeveloped and concentrated in urban areas, leaving the majority of the agricultural producers in the rural population with no access. However, agriculture forms a significant part of the lives of the rural households, who constitute about 85 per cent of the population. This study uses the Uganda household surveys conducted in 1992/93 and 1999/2000 to shed some light on access to, and the characteristics of demand for credit among the rural population. We employ the probit, tobit and multinomial logit model estimations and we analyse demand for credit and find that Uganda's credit market is highly segmented. The rural peasant producers are largely served by relatives/friends and self‐help credit associations and their loan applications are less likely to succeed, and of those that do, smaller loans are granted. The educated and the young are more likely to demand credit while women are less likely to, and to apply for smaller loans. Therefore, while government's agricultural modernization policy considers credit as an important input to its success and as the government plans to roll out the ‘wealth‐for‐all’ programme, more needs to be done to get credit to the sector and to ensure that it can be usefully utilized. Programmes to promote skills and vocational training to enhance production and training in appropriate use of credit are also needed.     

Some aspects of China's agricultural development experience: Implications for developing countries in Asia

China's rather ‘unorthodox’ rural development strategies have attracted growing interest from developing countries in search of more effective development alternatives. The Chinese experiment is characterized by: (1) heavy emphasis on the institutional precondition for agricultural development; (2) rejection of urban-biased policies for more balanced strategies comprising many distinctly pro-agrarian measures; and (3) an integrated approach, centred primarily on the communes, which closely links production to distribution, rural capital formation, rural industrialization, and a wide range of non-farm activities. The Chinese experience should be instructive to many developing countries, even though its direct transfer-ability to different political and social contexts is often called into question.     

The fourth mobilization: New phase of the Tachai movement

By the early 1970s the ‘Learn from Tachai’ campaign in China was seen there as having had a marked effect in increasing agricultural production. In 1975 the movement was made the subject of a national conference and then launched afresh on a broader and more intense scale, with the unit for emulation becoming the country rather than the village. It is now commensurate with the great mass movements of the 1950s which transformed China's rural society. The paper describes the new movement, illustrating its impact from the writer's field experience. (The paper may be seen as a sequel to the writer's ‘Learning from Tachai’, World Development. Vol. 3, Nos. 7 & 8 (July – August 1975)).     

Who will Meet China’s Import Demand for Forest Products?

Via computable general equilibrium modeling we find that as a result of economic growth, Yuan appreciation, and logging restrictions in China, China’s imports and exports of forest products would dramatically increase, and China’s imports would have displacement effects as timber-exporting countries would increase their exports to China while reducing their shipments to other countries. Such displacement effects would make pressure on forests in supplying countries less than they otherwise might be. Global economic growth is a dominant driving force for China’s imports. Russia, Southeast Asia, and Africa would remain major foreign suppliers of logs to China, while supply sources for Chinese imported lumber and paper products would be relatively diverse.     

The Challenge of Globalization for Large Chinese Firms

As China joins the World Trade Organization, the authors question whether China’s large firms will be able to compete on the global level playing field. Over the past two decades, Chinese large enterprises have undertaken extensive evolutionary change but, at the same time, the world’s leading firms have undergone a revolutionary transformation. Based on analysis of firms with the aerospace, oil and petrochemical industry, the authors conclude that China’s leading firms face critical challenges, even in sectors in which China’s policy-makers have scored significant successes.     

浙江农户借贷需求的差异分析——基于浙江省农户借贷行为的调查

本文借鉴社会学的分层理论,按照家庭收入来源的不同,将浙江农户分为四个阶层,通过对不同阶层农户入户调查返回的样本数据进行分析,发现虽然农户对信贷资金的需求总量和额度在不断上升,并由农业生产性贷款向非农经营和消费性贷款转变,但不同阶层农户在借贷需求上的差异很大。     

Producing and Procuring Horticultural Crops with Chinese Characteristics: The Case of Northern China

The main goal of our paper is to understand what types of farmers have been able to participate in the horticultural revolution, how they interact with markets and how supply chains affect their production decisions and incomes. We also want to understand if the rise of supermarkets has changed supply chains. Our analysis uses spatially sampled data from 200 communities and 500 households in the Greater Beijing area. In contrast to fears of some researchers, we find small and poor farmers actively participate in the emergence of China’s horticulture economy. Moreover, there has been almost no penetration of modern wholesalers or retailers into rural communities.     

By the teeth: A critical examination of James Scott's The moral economy of the peasant

Peasant households in Southeast Asia and elsewhere live on the margin of subsistence. Their survival strategies make them technological conservatives and weavers of reciprocal webs of social obligation and dependence. James C. Scott has argued that the fabric of this “moral economy” both guarantees subsistence for the peasants and forms the touchstone on which their judgements of social justice are tested. When those who should offer succor withdraw it, peasants are outraged and from their anger springs peasant rebellion. Two South Asian peasant rebellions of the 1940s (Telengana and Tebhaga) fail to support Scott's account and raise major questions about his historical method. Two others case studies focused on the early years of colonial contact (the Padri Wars and the capitalist transformation of the Kaveri delta) lead the authors to question sharply the existence of a “moral economy of the peasant” and to suggest that Scott has inadvertently presented a landlord's view of peasant society.     

Wealth and the demand for life insurance: evidence from Ontario, 1892

Our analysis of the life insurance holdings of male probated decedents in Ontario in 1892 demonstrates a negative correlation between the level of personal wealth and the demand for life insurance. Consistent with the theoretical literature on the demand for life insurance, and counter to the findings in much of the empirical literature, self-insurance was a substitute for market purchases of life insurance where self-insurance capabilities are a by-product of wealth accumulation. Our evidence suggests that households primarily demanded life insurance when they lacked accumulated reserves, or wealth, for self-insurance, often early in the life cycle. The growth of the life insurance industry reflected the growth of urban population relative to farming and an increased dependence on the head of household’s earnings.     

Chinese industrial productivity in an international context

The paper aims to find out and evaluate in an international context the level and growth rate of labour productivity in China's industry. In the course of this investigation it transpired that the data used often in the West, i.e. those of Field et al., lead to results that are rather implausible. However some new official Chinese data imply much more satisfying results. The other aim of the paper is to comment on recent radical changes in Chinese economic policy, in the light of her productivity performance.     

China and the Exports of Other Asian Countries

We analyze the impact of China’s growth on the exports of other Asian countries, distinguishing China’s demand for imports from its penetration of export markets. We account for the endogeneity of Chinese exports by applying instrumental variables in a gravity model with country-pair fixed-effects. We find that China’s crowding-out effect is felt mainly in markets for consumer goods and hence by less-developed Asian countries, not in markets for capital goods or by the more advanced Asian economies. Meanwhile, China has been sucking in imports from its Asian neighbors, but this effect is mainly felt in markets for capital goods. Hence, more and less developed Asian countries are being affected very differently by China’s rise. JEL no. E5, F4     

老龄化中国人口红利实现的可能性与途径探讨

本文首先简要回顾了有关老龄化社会的人口红利效应的相关研究。近而,利用抽样人口数据,本文预测了未来75年我国人口规模与结构的变化趋势,指出在未来的大部分年份里,从第一人口红利的角度看,人口结构很可能将对中国经济增长起负面作用;而解决未来养老问题并实现第二人口红利的关键是：从当前开始即在充分就业的前提下实现持续的、有效的资本积累。一个重要的、可行的资本积累方式就是建立积累制的养老金计划。     

China's economic system reform: Underlying factors and prospects

Three important determinants of economic growth in the Chinese context are: the motivation of economic units, the absorption of foreign technology and its diffusion and agricultural productivity. The Stalin model of the 1950s served China well, especially when sustained by ‘Chinese sub-models’ such as ties of trust with rural brigades, workers' innovation etc. After that investment effectiveness declined, and today the structural changes necessary point to the need to alter existing institutions which have become obsolete. In agriculture, the use of cash inputs is more common now and a sense of economic efficiency is increasingly required. Care should be taken in comparing China with East European countries given that China's per capita gross domestic product is much lower as is the percentage of agricultural output reaching the market. The comprehensiveness of the economic reform likely in China means that it will only be possible to judge it over a time horizon longer than five years. For such economic reforms to be wholly successful, they need to continue to incorporate Chinese ‘sub-models’ mentioned in the paper and must develop a network of supplying industries and inter-dependent factories.     

农户信贷行为影响因素的实证分析

农户是农村经济结构中最基本的经济单位和最直接的参与者,其行为直接关系到农村金融安排支持农村经济发展的效果。文章以二元Logistic模型为基础,利用220户农户调查数据,对农户从农信社贷款可得性的影响因素进行了实证分析,研究表明,影响农户信贷可得性的因素主要包括农户内在性因素和农信社外在性因素,其中,农户家庭年收入、户主对农信社的了解和有无借贷经历等内因性因素对农户信贷可得性的影响显著为正,农信社贷款额度、贷款效率等外因性因素对农户信贷可得性的影响分别显著为负和正。     

From plan to market in the health sector?: China’s experience

Countries worldwide confront the challenge of defining and achieving appropriate roles for government and market forces in the health sector. China—as both a developing and a transitional economy—represents an important case. This paper uses an international comparative perspective to examine how the health of China’s population and other aspects of health system performance changed during the reform era. We draw on standard public finance and health economics theory, as well as the more recent incomplete-contracting theory of property rights, to summarize the comparative advantages of government and market for financing and delivery of health services, particularly in developing and transitional economies. We then describe and analyze against this theoretical background the transformation of China’s health sector and recent commitment of government funds to move toward universal coverage.     

Socio-Economic Impact of Super Typhoon Harurot in San Mariano, Isabela, the Philippines

This paper reports on the socio-economic effects and coping mechanisms of farm households affected by super typhoon Imbudo in San Mariano, Isabela, the Philippines. Estimations of economic losses are given based on 150 interviews among the rural population. The relative loss per crop as part of the annual household income for yellow corn, banana, and rice were 64%, 24%, and 27%, respectively. Unexpectedly, most farm households did not change their agricultural strategies and continued with “business as usual” (78%). The main explanation for this lack of adaptation is found in the cultural and societal structure of farm households and their traders. This paper concludes with a short-term and long-term vulnerability and resilience analysis for the households, the socio-agricultural system, and the ecological system.     

农户参与订单农业行为及其影响因素研究——以山西省乡宁县为例

基于山西省乡宁县农户的调研资料和数据,对该地区农户参与订单农业行为及主要影响因素进行研究。结果表明:第一,该地区农户对订单农业认可度较高且农业经营经验丰富,但农户家庭农业劳动力普遍缺乏,以小规模农业经营为主。第二,农户参与订单农业行为受多重因素影响,其中订单企业是否提供技术指导、是否进行农产品质量控制以及是否保证农产品销路起正向作用;而农户户主年龄、文化程度以及家庭劳动力比重起负向作用。最后结合研究结果提出建议,以期对乡宁县订单农业蓬勃发展有所帮助。     

安徽农户投资行为影响因素的实证分析

农户是农业投资的重要主体,文章以安徽为例,建立计量经济模型,运用C-D生产函数对影响农户农业投资的因素与农户投资之间的关系进行回归分析,指出各因素对农户投资的影响程度,并就此提出增加农户投资的几点政策建议.