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2. When Dragons and Kangaroos Trade: China's Rapid Economic Growth and Its Implications for China and Australia
- Author:
- Jikun Huang, Jun Yang, and Scott Rozelle
- Publication Date:
- 02-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- China's economy has experienced remarkable growth since economic reforms were initiated in the late 1970s and pushed forward by a number of complementary policies. Since the mid-1980s, rural township and village-owned enterprises (TVEs) development; measures to provide a better market environment through domestic market reform; fiscal and financial expansions; the devaluation of exchange rate; trade liberalisation; the expansion of special economic zones to attract foreign direct investment (FDI); the state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform; agricultural market liberalisation, and many other reforms have all contributed to China's economic growth. In response, the annual growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) was about nearly 10% in 1979–2004 (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2005).
- Topic:
- Agriculture and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- China, Asia, Australia, and Australia/Pacific
3. The Role of Agriculture in China's Development: Past Failures, Present Successes and Future Challenges
- Author:
- Jikun Huang, Keijiro Otsuka, and Scott Rozelle
- Publication Date:
- 01-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- The view toward agricultural and rural development in the modern world has changed dramatically in the past several decades. Traditionally, agriculture was thought of an inferior partner in development. Since the size of the sector falls during development, it was logically considered that it could be ignored. Why is that leaders would ever want to invest in a sector that shrinking? Some academics urged policy makers to treat agriculture like a black box from which resources could be costlessly extracted (Lewis, 1954). All investment was supposed to be targeted at the industry and the cities. As a low productivity sector, it did not deserve investment.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
4. Irrigation Water Pricing Policy in China
- Author:
- Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Richard Howitt, and Jinxia Wang
- Publication Date:
- 02-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- As water becomes scarcer in northern China, designing policies that can induce water users to save water has become one of the most important tasks facing China's leader. Past water policies may not be a solution for the water scarcity problem in the long run. This paper looks at a new water policy: increasing water prices so as to provide water users with direct incentives to save water. Using a methodology that allows us to incorporate the resource constraints, we are able to recover the true price of water with a set of plot level data. Our results show that farmers are quite responsive if the correct price signal is used, unlike estimates of price elasticities that are based on traditional methods. Our estimation results show that water is severely under priced in our sample areas in China. As a result, water users are not likely to respond to increases in water prices. Thus as the first step to establishing an effective water pricing policy, policy makers must increase water price to the level of VMP so that water price reflects the true value of water, the correct price signal. Increases in water prices once they are set at the level of VMP, however, can lead to significant water savings. However, our analysis also shows that higher water prices also affect other aspects of the rural sector. Higher irrigation costs will lower the production of all crops, in general, and that of grain crops, in particular. Furthermore, when facing higher irrigation costs, households suffer income losses. Crop income distribution also worsens with increases in water prices.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Economics, and Environment
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
5. Water User Associations and the Evolution and Determinants of Management Reform: A Representative Look at Northern China
- Author:
- Jikun Huang, Qiuqiong Huang, Jinxia Wang, and Scott Rozelle
- Publication Date:
- 02-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- Increasing demand for China's limited water resources (across China, but mostly in northern China) from rapidly growing industry, urban populations and agriculture implies potentially dire consequences for the sustainability of water use and drastic changes in cultivation patterns (Zhang, 2001). Problems in the water sector also have significant implications for China's future trade position in key crops and may affect the income of the farming sector (Huang et al., 1999).
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, Environment, and Government
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
6. Why Did the Communist Party Reform in China, But Not in the Soviet Union? The Political Economy of Agricultural Transition
- Author:
- Johan Swinnen and Scott Rozelle
- Publication Date:
- 01-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- The dramatic transition from Communism to market economies across Asia and Europe started in the Chinese countryside in the 1970s. Since then more than a billion of people, many of them very poor, have been affected by radical reforms in agriculture. However, there are enormous differences in the reform strategies that countries have chosen. This paper presents a set of arguments to explain why countries have chosen different reform policies.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, Government, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Russia, China, Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union
7. Information, Incentives and Institutions: Experimenting with Private-Public Partnerships to Link the Poor with Modern Supply Chains
- Author:
- Jikun Huang, Johan Swinnen, Marcel Fafchamps, Tom Reardon, Bart Minten, and Scott Rozelle
- Publication Date:
- 03-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center
- Abstract:
- To lift more than 10,000 farmers directly out of poverty by developing new Best-Practice Models for linking the poor to modern supply chains and after scaling up by our private and public partners to lift more than 1 million farmers out of poverty.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, Non-Governmental Organization, and Poverty
- Political Geography:
- Africa, China, India, Asia, Senegal, and Madagascar