An Empirical Study Of The Impact Of China’s Agricultural Imports

In recent years, with China’s agricultural imports increased substantially, China has been playing an increased important role in the world trade system, and now becomes the largest importer of agricultural products in the world.In the next period of time, with the rigid growth in consumer demand and strengthened constraints in soil and water resources, China’s agricultural imports are inevitable and will continue to increase, this will be have impacts on production, consumption, price and so on. Under such circumstance, how to use agricultural imports to ensure food security and how to avoid the possible adverse effects of agricultural imports, it is an important issue has to be considered in the current and coming period. However,China has long insisted high self-sufficiency rate in food production, the function of agricultural imports was limited to "offset shortage". The impact of agricultural imports and the role of agricultural imports in the food security demand for further study. Therefore, it is important and urgent to analyze the impact of China’s agricultural imports systematically.In order to better understand China’s agricultural imports and its impacts. Firstly, this study reviews the development of agricultural trade since the founding of China, places emphasis on the agricultural trade structure. Secondly, analyzes the reason of China’s agricultural imports, focusing on agricultural resource constraints, demographic changes, economic growth, trade liberalization, etc. Third, analyzes the impact of agricultural imports on the domestic and international markets theoretically, according to the actual changes in agricultural production, consumption and prices, determines whether the adverse impacts of imports was offset by other factors. Finally, for the purpose of assessing the impact of imports, the Global Trade Analysis Model (GTAP) will be introduced in order to separate the impact of imports from the impact of various factors.The results show that:(1) In recent years, there has a certain inevitability in China’s agricultural import increasing significantly and in China’s agricultural trade deficit expanding continuously. The reason is that the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization in China lead a significant increase in consumer demand, however the constraints of land and water is enhanced. It further confirms the China’s agricultural imports will continue to increase and agricultural trade deficit will continue to expand with the further growth of Chinese economy.(2) Trade liberalization is only one of the external conditions affects China’s agricultural imports, the direct reason of the extra-ordinary increase in cereal imports in2012is the domestic price is much higher than international prices.(3) The agricultural imports contributes to reduce the market price, it is not only directly reduces itself market price, but also have a ripple effect through lower production costs or consumption substitution, indirectly reduces other agricultural prices. Affected by agricultural imports, there are different degrees of decline for all agricultural market prices, the most obvious in price decline is oilseeds, vegetable oil and sugar prices.(4) The agricultural production is restrained obviously by agricultural imports, especially oilseeds production. Land-intensive agricultural products and labor-intensive agricultural products have different impacts on agricultural production. The former only restrains itself production and has a positive impact on other agricultural production, while the latter not only restrains itself production, but also restrains other agricultural production. It means that the imports of land-intensive agricultural products contributes to national food security by adjusting the structure of agricultural imports moderately.(5) The agricultural imports contributes to stimulate consumption, the consumption volume of all agricultural products has increased in varying degrees affected by agricultural imports, especially coarse grains, oilseeds and vegetable consumption increases significantly. It means agricultural imports contribute to improve dietary consumption structure.(6) Currently, mostly of the adverse impact of agricultural imports on Chinese agricultural production was offset by other factors, China’s agricultural imports does not harm China’s food self-sufficiency rate and the basic living standards of low-income groups in other countries of the world.