ABSTRACT
China's agricultural policy changes have attracted worldwide attention. During the first half of the 1980s, fundamental reforms were introduced which turned a rigid, inefficient, collective-based production system into one based on fanners' households and brought unprecedented production growth. Market liberalization and regionalization characterized the agricultural policy changes in China. The liberalization process had begun much earlier with non-grain products, including vegetables, fruits, aquatic and livestock products, rather than with grain. Markets for almost all of these products had been liberalized by the early 1990s. Grain ration prices were raised twice, in 1991 and 1992, each time by an average of 50 per cent. This was a very bold and significant step for further reforms in the following years. It’s most important effect was that it broke up a fixed price system, under which the grain rationing price had been frozen for 25 years.
