Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
05
The impact of WTO accession
on China's agricultural sector
Xiaolu Wang
Agriculture is still very important in China, not only because it provides the
major source of food for the people but also because t s stll the major
source of ncome for half of the 1.26 bllon people n Chna. In the past half
a century, from 1952 to 2000, China experienced rapid industrialisation, and
the share of agriculture in GDP fell from 51 per cent to 16 per cent. However,
the dfferentaton of the populaton changed far more slowly. Durng the
same period, the proportion of rural people in the total population only
declined from 85 per cent to 64 per cent, and the proportion of agricultural
workers in China's total employment fell from 84 per cent to 50 per cent.
The declne n the share of agrcultural workers was faster than the declne
n the share of the rural populaton due to rapd rural ndustralsaton
(that is, the development of the Township and Village Enterprises sector)
during the past two decades. Still, there were 334 million workers in the
agrcultural sector n the year 2000.
1
From the large disparity between the agricultural share in GDP and the
share of agricultural workers in total employment, one can see how low
the labour productvty of the agrcultural sector s compared wth other
sectors. In year 2000, rural per capita net income was only 2253 yuan (or
US$272), which was equivalent to only 36 per cent of the average urban
per capta dsposable ncome.
2
Of the total rural per capita net income,
agricultural income was 1136 yuan, of which 868 yuan was from farming,
