ABSTRACT
The key milestone of China’s deepening integration into the global economy was its admission to the World Trade Organization (WTO) at the end of 2001. This event was highly controversial at the time and sparked a fierce debate over the potential impact on the Chinese economy and how China could best cope with the challenges as well as the opportunities. Of particular concern were China’s fragile agricultural sector and farmers’ welfare. It was feared that, as part of China’s WTO commitments, substantial tariff reductions and minimum access opportunities under the tariff-rate quota (TRQ) system and the weakening of other mechanisms of state control and support would bring surging imports of cheap agricultural products, further undermining the sluggish income growth of the Chinese farmers. Many were worried that a sharp fall in farmers’ income and sweeping structural changes in the agricultural sector would only exacerbate China’s agrarian crisis. These concerns have accentuated the urgency for the Chinese government to revamp its policy towards agriculture and to restructure rural institutions of governance that impose heavy burdens on Chinese farmers and undercut China’s only limited support for agriculture.
