as well as industrial crops, livestock, and other types of output. Section V discusses factors of production and their modernization. Sections VI and VIII, which are on trade and consumption, are brief discussions of current trends. Section VII on agricultural development problems and prospects discusses the likely future course of agricultural development in China given present capabilities and the strengths and weaknesses of current programs.

II. CHINA'S RESOURCE ENDOWMENT

A. Land

The history of the development of Chinese agriculture has been marked by the expansion of the population onto new arable land, and by increasing unit yields on land which was already cultivated.' As new land that could be readily cultivated has become scarcer, and as the population has increased, the importance of unit yields has become greater. By now about the only feasible way to raise agricultural production is to raise yields on land that is now cultivated, and most current agricultural programs are designed with this in mind. While the total land area of the PRC is about the same as that of the continental United States, only 11 percent can be cultivated as farmland, compared to about 22 percent in the United States. Efforts to increase the arable area continue, but increases are hard and expensive to win. The land that is not already cultivated is not very fertile, and yields on some of the marginal lands now in cultivation are low.

1 See Perkins, Dwight H., Agricultural Development in China 1568-1968. Chicago: Aldine, 1969.

Natural divisions of climate and topography separate the main agricultural area, the eastern half of the country, into two broad segments-North and South China-with the break occurring roughly at the Yangtze River 2 (see figure 1). The river separates the highprecipitation, semitropical South from the drier North, where precipitation is more seasonal. Agriculture in the South is based upon paddy rice, while in the North the base is dry land crops, especially coarse grains and wheat.

In the rice region, the climate permits a longer growing season and multicropping of large areas. Soils are poor, but the supply of water is adequate, and the density of both human and animal population means that large amounts of organic fertilizer are available. Chinese rice yields per unit of sown area are much higher than in most developing

See Buck, John Lossing, Land Utilization in China. Nanking: University of Nanking, 1937.

countries because of intensive fertilization and the adaptation of agricultural techniques to suit local circumstances. In the North, on the other hand, yields are relatively low overall, although wheat yields are similar to those obtained by other LDC's.

China's agriculture has been characterized historically by intensive inputs of labor on a limited supply of land. Steady expansion of multiple cropping, exacting crop rotations, improved irrigation and heavier use of organic fertilizer have enabled the Chinese over centuries to extract even higher annual yields per unit of cultivated land. Steady technological progress has been part of the adaptation of the large and growing population to given resources. As population pressure has become particularly intense in the second half of this century the adoption of modern inputs such as agrochemicals and mechanization has become a necessity.

Yields per acre have increased over time in many areas to a very high level. But even so, population increases have eaten up virtually all of the gains in output (see fig. 2). Grain production per capita has been just at the subsistence level for centuries, and it remains there today. Chinese agriculture has been vulnerable to frequent natural disasters and fluctuations in output which in the past have often led to localized famine. Unequal distribution of production and agricultural income persist despite the efforts of the government to reduce these inequalities in the countryside.

B. Population

The Chinese have not taken a formal census since 1953, and they have not released precise population figures since the 1950's. Aird estimates that the population was just over one billion as of July 1, 1978, and that the rate of increase will decline rapidly over the next few years from about 2 percent to less than 1.5 percent per year. At currently projected rates of increase, by the year 2000 the population will be 1.4 billion.

China's large population is a problem because of limited land resources, but it also means a larger labor force. More than one crop per year has to be planted, but the labor is available to harvest one crop and plant another in a very short time, to cultivate the crops and to collect the huge amounts of organic fertilizer necessary to replace the nutrients taken from the soil.

The attitude of the Chinese toward their population seems ambiguous and has changed from time to time. It is because of their dense population that they have had to adopt such an intensive farming system and that they have been able to maintain only a narrow margin over subsistence despite their intensive use of the land. Because they recognize the problems it creates, the Chinese since the founding of the People's Republic have attempted with varying degrees of vigor and success to control their rate of population growth.

The Chinese have begun to achieve some success in controlling their population growth rate. Before contemporary times, the traditional Malthusian checks of famine and war had prevented the population from growing much more rapidly than agricultural production. Nevertheless, with the development of intensive agricultural methods, most of the country had become very densely populated by 1949 and the population continued to grow during the 1950's. After several false starts, the Chinese have become committed to population planning.

Population planning measures seem to have been effective, especially in the cities. They are carried out mainly through strong organization, peer pressure, late marriages, and a broad education program to control the number and timing of births. As a last resort, in some areas even stronger measures, such as denial of food ration cards for more than two children, are employed. Contraceptive supplies and abortions are provided by the state. As a result, the trend of the rate of population increases is declining.

The goal of the leadership is to reduce the population growth rate to less than one percent. Hua Kuo-feng announced at the Fifth National People's Congress that this goal is to be achieved by 1980.* In reality, it is likely to take longer, but the leadership clearly intends to make strenuous efforts to continue to lower the population growth

rate.

III. AGRICULTURAL POLICY

A. The Background of Policy

Chinese agricultural development policies have been strongly influenced by the pattern of development which had occurred before 1949. In modernizing the Chinese have looked to the experience of

See Aird, John S., "Population Growth in the People's Republic of China," tables 1 and 2, pp. 465 and 467 in this volume.

See FBIS Mar. 7, 1978, p. D25.

their own past and to the experiences of other countries with similar problems and goals. Most notably, they have profited from the experiences of the Soviet Union and Japan.

Japan shares with China the characteristics of dense population and intensive traditional agriculture, as well as a similar cultural heritage. And the Japanese had succeeded in modernizing their agriculture and raising yields to extremely high levels while simultaneously achieving very high industrial growth rates. The Chinese press in discussion of agricultural policy during the early 1960's often made reference to Japan's intensive use of modern inputs. Development has taken place in a different economic setting, but the path to agricultural modernization chosen by the Chinese, and the major factors of production used in the process, are strikingly similar to those of Japan.

During most of the 1950's, however, Chinese agricultural policy seems to have taken its lessons from the Soviet model. Although the two countries' agricultural systems are physically very different, China shared with the Soviet Union, among other things, basically similar ideology and the specific goal of rapid industrialization supported by a collectivized agriculture.

Chinese policies toward agriculture in the 1950's have sometimes been compared to those undertaken by the Soviets under Stalin. While the Chinese deny that the policies they followed were like those of the Soviets, there were in fact some important similarities. Investment in agriculture, and the provision of modern inputs, were relatively small. Agriculture got only 7.6 percent of Chinese investment funds during the first 5-year plan (1953-57), or an average of 838 million yuan per year. And also, like the Soviets, the ultimate goal of the Chinese was collectivization and the use of agriculture to support industrialization.

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On the other hand, collectivization in China proceeded in stages and (even considering the Great Leap Forward) was achieved with less turmoil than in the Soviet Union. The burden of taxation and compulsory procurement of grain was lighter in China than it had been in the Soviet Union. The amount of labor which moved from rural to urban areas was also smaller in China. The Chinese apparently learned some lessons from the example of the Soviet collectivization experience.

B. Policy in the 1950's

China's policies toward agriculture since 1949 have gone through several distinct phases. The earliest stage, lasting through 1952, was recovery from the years of war and civil war. This was followed during the first 5-year plan period by collectivization in several stages, leading to the formation of communes in most agricultural areas in 1958.

In 1956 the National Program for Agricultural Development (NPAD) was adopted. The NPAD was to run from 1956 through 1967, and included many ambitious goals for the rural sector. Among

State Statistical Bureau. Ten Great Years, p. 57. Peking: 1960. Most of this was in water conservancy. Policy during the 1950's is described in Schran, Peter, The Development of Chinese Agriculture 1950-59. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1969. Some aspects of Chinese policy since that time are discussed in Stavis, Benedict, Making Green Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Rural Development Committee, 1974. An overview of agriclutural policy and its relationship to other policies and problems is provided in Eckstein, Alexander, China's Economic Revolution. Cambridge University Press, 1977.