The Development and Challenge of China's Agriculture
Date : 18 February 2014
The New Zealand Contemporary China Research Centre in association with the Victoria University of Wellington Business School and Sivereye Communications hosted a Public Lecture by Mr Chen Xiwen, Deputy Head (Minister-level) and Director of the Office, Central Rural Work Leading Group and Deputy Director of the Office, Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs. Hon Nathan Guy, Minister of Primary Industries, introduced the lecture at Parliament.
Mr Chen is a highly respected agricultural economist who has made major contributions to China’s economic policymaking on agricultural development and the rural economy. His speech focussed on the development of Chinese agriculture over the last six decades and highlighted China’s current challenges. Chen stressed on the ongoing significance of the sector to China’s economic and social development.
Chen began by highlighting the many accomplishments in agricultural development in China, noting the massive increases in agricultural production, the important reforms of agricultural taxes, pricing reforms, ownership reforms and government support for the rural economy and rural residents.
Agricultural development was located within the broad policy of industrialisation and modernisation of the Chinese economy and the general pattern of urbanisation. The introduction of efficient and larger-scale farming systems as well as high-technology agricultural systems, management and land care continue to drive development of the sector.
Chen then highlighted two of the most important challenges in China’s agricultural sector.
The first challenge is created through the process of urbanisation, population growth and increases in food intake brought on by higher standards of living. Even though China’s agricultural production has increased rapidly over the last few centuries the demand from urban populations has increased even faster leading to a shortage of supply. The Chinese population is 19.2% of the world population but China has only 4% of the world’s arable land.
In the short-term then, as efforts are made to continue to increase agricultural supply to meet the rapidly increasing demand, China will continue to update its food security strategy by introducing a dual policy of promoting local production of basic food staples complimented by increased trade and joint enterprises with agricultural producing countries.
The second challenge highlighted by Mr Chen was the importance of maintaining the ecosystems and the environment in rural areas to increase the sustainability of China’s agricultural sector. Chen focussed on reducing fertilizer use, better land management, breaking in new land, introducing more efficient technologies and improving water use as the new focus of the changing model of agricultural development.
Food security and environmental protection remain the focus of research on China’s agricultural development meaning there is great opportunity for collaboration and partnership with countries that have highly developed management systems. This will likely come not only in the continuation of agricultural trade but also in technology, management and research cooperation.
About the speaker
Throughout his career Chen Xiwen has engaged in research on issues relating to rural economic theory and policy. Since the 1980s he has participated in drafting most of China’s key documents in this area (most notably China’s No. 1 Central Document on agricultural development each year) for both the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council. He has published extensively and is frequently interviewed and quoted in the media. He has won the prestigious Sun Yefang Economics Awards, and in 1992, he was awarded a special stipend from the Chinese Government for his contribution and expertise.
Chen Xiwen was born in Shanghai in July 1950. His ancestral home is in Jiangsu Province of China.
In September 1968 he was one of the young people ‘sent down to the countryside’ to work in a ‘Production and Construction Corps.’ in the rural Heilongjiang Province of China. In 1978 (following the Cultural Revolution), he was admitted to the Department of Agricultural Economics of Renmin University of China.
On graduation in 1982 he was assigned to work in the Institute of Agricultural Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In 1985 he joined the Rural Development Research Centre of the State Council, working as deputy head and then head of its Development Research Institute.
In July 1990 he became the deputy head, and later the head of the Rural Economy Research Department of the Department Research Centre of the State Council (concurrently a member of the CPC Party Leading Group of the Centre after 1999). From 1994-1998 he was seconded to the Office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs.
In 2000 Chen was appointed Vice President of the Department Research Centre of the State Council.
Since 2003 Chen has held a variety of positions, including Deputy Director of the Office of the Central Leading Group on Financial and Economic Affairs, member and then Deputy Head and Director of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, and member of the CPC Party-Building Leading Group of the CPC Central Committee.
Chen was a deputy to the 16th and the 17th National People’s Congress, and member of the National Committee of the 11th Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and Deputy Director of the Economic Committee of the CPPCC.
Chen’s activities also include the following:
- member of the Evaluation Committee of the Sun Yefang Economics Foundation;
- member of the Board of Supervisors for the All China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives;
- part-time professor and PhD supervisor in several universities and institutions including the Party School of the CPC Central Committee; the Renmin University of China; the China Agricultural University; Zhejiang University; Shanghai Jiaotong University; Southwestern University of Finance and Economics; and Nanjing Agricultural University.
Chen Xiwen’s key publications
- Systematic Observation of China’s Rural Economic Structural Reform; 1984
- Mid-Term Planning of China’s Rural Economic Structural Reform; 1987
- China’s Rural Economic Reform: Review and Outlook; 1993
- Twenty Years of China’s Economic Transformation: China’s Rural Economic Reform; 1999
- Half Century of China’s Agriculture; 1999
- New Stage in China’ Agricultural Development; 2000