Study On The Impact Of Rising Labor Cost On The Status Of China's Agricultural Value Chain

Since the 21 st century,China's agricultural trade has achieved rapid development,which has long-term relied on cheap and abundant labor resources to maintain a comparative advantage in international competition such that China has become a major agricultural trade country.However,with the arrival of the “Lewis Turning Point” and the gradual disappearance of the demographic dividend,the structure of the agricultural labor force has changed and the labor cost has risen sharply,which has made China's agricultural product export profit space constantly compressed and resulted that the entire agricultural product export is facing unprecedented challenges.In order to cope with these challenges,it is particularly important to enhance the status of China's global agricultural value chain.It is necessary to realize the transformation from “winning by quantity” to “winning by quality”.Based on the above background,this paper explores how to improve the status of global agricultural value chain and realize the structural transformation and upgrading of agricultural industry in the critical period of facing severe challenges from the perspective of export technology complexity.This paper firstly descriptively analyzes the agricultural labor cost and the basic situation of agricultural products export in China from 2002 to 2017.Secondly,it utilizes the complexity of export technology modified by Hausmann et al(2007)to measure China's position in the global agricultural value chain and calculate the technical complexity of agricultural products export in 36 countries and 27 provinces in China from 2002 to 2017.We further divide them into five major agricultural products,such as bulk agricultural products,intermediate agricultural products,horticulture,aquatic products and processing,and analyze their exports.The trend of technological complexity is compared with the major developed countries and developing countries in the world.Finally,the wages of workers,forestry,animal husbandry and fishery are used as the indicators of labor cost,and the impact of rising labor costs on the status of China's agricultural value chain is empirically tested.Through the above research,the main conclusions are as follows:(1)In 2002-2017,the overall upward trend of China's agricultural labor costs is obvious and the increase rate is larger in comparison with other industries such that the era of low labor costs has gone.In terms of the three major economic regions,the eastern labor cost is the highest,the western region is the second,and the central region is the lowest,while the central region has the fastest growth rate,followed by the western region and the eastern region.As for the scale of agricultural product exports,the scale of exports has been expanding and has always played an important role in the export of agricultural products.At the same time,the trade in agricultural products has a persistent deficit.In the structure of agricultural exports,the characteristics of single export structure and primary products account for a large proportion reflect that China's agricultural export is at the bottom of the “smile curve” of the agricultural value chain.(2)The complexity of China's agricultural product export technology is constantly improving,but there are still large differences in the technical complexity of agricultural products export in different categories and regions.The main manifestation is that the export technology content of processed agricultural products is the highest,horticulture,aquatic products and other agricultural products are behind,and the eastern coastal provinces are higher than the central and western provinces.From the international comparison point of view,there is a clear gap in the technical complexity of agricultural products export between countries with different levels of economic development.The specific performance is that the technical complexity of China's agricultural products is at a relatively low level compared with developed countries,while still has certain advantages compared with countries such as Brazil and India.(3)Agricultural labor cost has a significant positive impact on the improvement of China's agricultural value chain status,and this effect can positively affect the complexity of export technology by improving R&D level,human capital level and consumption level.From the perspectives of the three regions of the eastern,central and western regions,labor cost has a positive effect on improving the technical complexity of agricultural products export.However,there are certain differences that the greatest increase in the technical complexity of exporting agricultural products in the east,the second in the west,and the central part is the weakest,which may be caused by the differences in the economy and talent base of the eastern and central western regions.Finally,according to the conclusions of this paper,we propose to improve the status of China's global agricultural value chain in the context of rising labor costs:(1)Adjusting the structure of agricultural production,promoting agricultural quality and efficiency;(2)Accelerate agricultural science and technology innovation and extend the value of agricultural industry;(3)Strengthen the support of talent revitalization and pay attention to human capital development;(4)Increase the income of workers,stimulate consumption and expand domestic demand.