Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
fisheries) in the economy has been replaced by the industry and service
sectors. In spite of significant growth in agricultural production, the share
of the agrcultural sector n GDP declned from 51 per cent to only 15 per
cent from 1952 to 2001. However, because of the large size and continued
growth of the rural population, the employment structure of the agricultural
and non-agrcultural sectors changed far more slowly than the change n
the output structure. Agricultural employment accounted for 84 per cent of
total employment in 1952, and declined to 50 per cent in 2001. At the same
time, agricultural employment increased from 173 million to 365 million.
1
The share of the rural populaton changed even more slowly. The rural
population still accounts for 62 per cent of China's total population, as
compared to 85 per cent in 1953 (Table 4.1).
Farming remains the most important component of Chinese agriculture;
although reduced, it still accounted for 55 per cent of the gross value of
agricultural output in year 2001. Surveys show that, in year 2000, 51 per
cent of rural household ncome came from the agrcultural sector as a whole
and 39 per cent from farming (Figure 4.1). Grain production has been the
major farming activity, especially in less developed regions.
Movement of the agricultural population to non-agricultural sectors was
hampered by the restrctve central polces durng the pre-reform perod
from the 1950s to the late 1970s. Rural ndustralsaton and urbansaton
has been speeded up snce the market reforms. Such developments have
provded close to 200 mllon addtonal non-agrcultural jobs to farmers n
rural and urban areas over the past 24 years. Still, the number of farmers
has ncreased and there appears to be more surplus agrcultural labour
than ever before. Rural income grew slowly, and differences between rural
and urban ncomes became larger.
Table 4.2 shows changes n ncome per capta n rural and urban areas
of China and its three major regions from 1980 to 2000. It shows that rural
income per capita in rural areas was 47 per cent of urban income in 1980;
this ratio had declined to 35 per cent by 2000. Rural-urban income disparity
increased in all three regions, but more seriously in the least-developed
west region where the rural-urban income ratio fell from 45 to 30 per cent
during the same period. In year 2000, the average annual rural income
per capita in the west region was 1,713 yuan (or US$207), only half of the
average rural ncome n the east regon.
