China, People’s Republic

The pace of growth in China's agricultural sector is remarkable. Over the past 20 years, food production has outpaced population growth, and enhanced the nutritional status of a billion people. But this success has given rise to a number of questions. Most importantly, will China be able to provide food for its population in a sustainable way, while absorbing the 15 million people added to its population each year? What policies should accompany China’s transition to a market-based economy in the agricultural sector which employs the vast majority of China’s working population? What are the implications of economic and agricultural growth for the environment, the rural communities and the social fabric? What are the implications for international agricultural markets and what could be at stake for other food importing countries? Determining how this demand for food will be met requires a complex analytical framework whose parameters are the subject of an intense discussion and debate. The proceedings of this workshop provide a rich repository of material that helps answer many of these questions.

China’s economy has expanded by leaps and bounds, with dazzling progress since it first opened to foreign investment and reform in 1978. Over the last 25 years and after a long period of economic autarky the country has emerged as a major player in world trade. Its accession to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001 was a milestone. China presents both a threat and an opportunity for Latin American emerging markets. On average and despite some exceptions, Latin America is a clear trade winner from Chinese global integration. This chapter studies China’s exporting and importing structure, using a database of 620 different goods. It builds two indices of trade competition to compare Chinese impacts over 1998-2004 on 34 economies, of which 15 are Latin American. The results generally confirm that there is no relevant trade competition between China and Latin America products in the US market. Not surprisingly, countries that export mainly commodities face lower competition, because China is a net importer of raw materials and an exporter of manufacturing products. At the same time, China is a wake-up call. The country has emerged as a major exporter at both the labour-intensive, low technology and, increasingly, at the knowledge-intensive, higher technology end of the product spectrum. It is presenting challenges to all developing countries, and particularly other trade champions like Mexico in nearly all sectors, from textiles to other more value-added industrialised products.

As discussed in Chapter 1, a precondition for closing a large rural-urban income gap in China is a large outflow of labour from agriculture to other sectors of the economy. Moreover, mobile labour is an important factor contributing to China’s welfare gains from multilateral liberalisation. This annex discusses the impact of labour market reforms on rural incomes and poverty

While road densities give a general indication of relative accessibility, the most accurate measures of actual accessibility are drive times. We conducted GIS-based analysis for this Territorial Development Review of road-based accessibility to eight strategic locations in Guangdong: Guangzhou in the Inner PRD and Hong Kong, China; Huizhou in the eastern part of the Outer PRD; Jiangmen and Zhaoqing in the western portion of the Outer PRD; Shantou in the Eastern Coastal Corridor; Shaoguan in the Northern Region; and Zhanjiang in the Western Coastal Corridor. Locations were selected to compare the relative accessibility of cities in the Inner and Outer PRD, and Guangdong’s three peripheral regions.

The industrial structure of each PLC has been analysed in terms of: i) the volume of gross industrial output value in 2007; ii) the industrial sectors’ concentration, and trends in concentration from 2000 to 2007, by calculating location quotients of gross industrial output value relative to Guangdong as a whole for both years; iii) the productivity of each sector in each PLC in terms of average gross output value per firm; and iv) a comparison of these productivity levels against provincial averages.

The People’s Republic of China is an important player in international markets for animal products, antibiotics, as well as in global efforts to combat antibiotic resistance (AMR). This paper reviews use of antibiotics and the emergence of AMR in Chinese food animal production. The rapid growth in food, animal production, and the relatively poor animal production conditions as well as increasing production intensity led to a sharp increase in antibiotic use in both absolute and relative terms. This trend, however, has been reversed by recent government policies and public awareness of AMR. Four government policies are particularly important in attempting to decrease the use of antibiotics: the imposition of maximum residue levels, establishing a list of permitted antibiotics, the proper use of antibiotics during the withdrawal period, and establishing a list of prescription-only antibiotics use in animal production. Antibiotic use in China is more than five times higher than the international average. One of the main reasons for the relative higher antibiotic usage is the widespread misuse associated with growth promotion in the feed and veterinary use on broiler and pig farms. The relatively low cost of antibiotics, estimated at 1% to 3% of production costs, encourages such excess use in livestock production, but alternatives are often not available and more costly. This paper recommends a mix of economic and regulatory approaches to control the overuse of antibiotics in livestock production and limit the rise in antimicrobial resistance.

The expansion of value added taxes to more than 140 countries (see Chapter 2) is one of the major developments in the consumption taxes area over the last twenty years. Whilst the statistical part of this publication is limited to OECD member countries it is useful to provide an overview of the VAT systems being developed in three major non- OECD economies i.e. China, Russia and India.

Are other economies de-coupling from the US slowdown? appears in OECD Economic Outlook: June No. 83 - Volume 2008 Issue 1.