Chinese grain economy and policy

China is the largest grain producer in the world, over 400 million tonnes being produced in 1984. This sustains the lives of one thousand million Chinese and is a potentially important factor in the stabilization of world grain markets. By virtue of its sheer size, China has the capability of significantly affecting world grain markets; but since the founding of the People's Republic of China the government has also imposed tight controls on the agricultural sector of the economy. This book provides a detailed analysis of China's grain economy and related policies using empirical data from 1952 until the late 1980s. Statistics are presented to demonstrate that the development of agriculture is clearly the foundation for developing the Chinese national economy. A number of key issues are addressed - peasants' supply-response behaviour and the role of price signals on producers under a tightly controlled economic system, policy changes and patterns and their impact on grain and agricultural production, demand for grain in China under the planned economic system, relationships between grain production, domestic consumption and foreign trade. The book illustrates how the liberalization which has taken place since 1978 has changed the nature of incentives facing grain producers, but emphasizes that the events of 1989 and 1990 throughout the Communist world add a new urgency to the need to understand the basic relationships of the agricultural sector of socialist economies. This comprehensive work should interest economists and policy-makers studying or concerned with agricultural economics in general, or the Chinese economy in particular.