Comparative Analysis On The Evolution Of Agricultural Support Policies In East Asian Economies (1945-2013)

According to the fundamental viewpoints of development economics and agricultural economics, along with the process of industrialisation, agricultural support is compulsory due to its nature of weakness of agriculture, to stabilised the agricultural production and narrow the income gap between urban and rural areas. In the progress of industrialisation, making suitable agricultural support policies in various agricultural development stages, exploring proper level of support, are hot topics in the research filed of Agricultural support policies in Chinese mainland. Inadequate support can hardly achieve the goal of promote agricultural production and increase farmers’ income, while over supporting will lead to high stress to government finance and overdependence to policy of agricultural production and farmers’ income, which will further consequence in the decline of agricultural competitiveness, and danger the food security.In East Asian economic entities, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China’s mainland share similar agricultural production conditions and pattern of post-war national economy growth. Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have overcome the middle-income trap, accomplished the industrialisation and stepped into developed entities. Comparing to these three entities, the economy development in China’s mainland falls behind, and still stays in the middle and late stage of industrialisation. Thus, the common patterns and features of agricultural support policies evolvement in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have great referential value to industrialisation and agricultural modernisation in China’s Mainland.This study compared the agricultural support policies of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan after the Second World War, induced the patterns of their evolution. By comparing the patterns with agricultural support policies in China’s mainland, the research argued the similarity and difference between them and provided suggestions to the further development of Agricultural support policies in China’s mainland. To achieve this goal, this research applied the method of compararive study and the framework of SCP in industrial economics. Oriented from the individual and common interest of farmer, non-farmer and government, the research explores the evolution patterns by study the policy background, path choice and effect.By the comparison, there are common patterns in the evolution of agricultural support policies in East Asian typical economic entities after the Second World War. The overall evolution can be divided into three stages, with the aims of promote agricultural productivity, promote agricultural production efficiency, and promote sustainable agriculture respectively. Currently, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are in the third stage, and China’s mainland is in the transition from stage one to stage two.Along with the evolution process of agricultural support policies in East Asian entities, the agricultural production condition improved gradually, while the resources for production are decreasing. The aims of policies experienced promote agricultural productivity, agricultural production efficiency and sustainable agriculture. Each entity established and launched various agricultural support laws as agricultural basic law in different stages. The concern of policies moved from production to the integration of production, processing, logistics, and sales. Generally, the policies achieved the goal of promote agricultural support and farmer’s income in the first and second stage. However, its effect is declining and can hardly reach the expectation in the third stage. The fail of agricultural support policies in East Asian typical economic entities can be attributed to the over support and irrational structure of support tools, which lead to the weakening of agricultural competitiveness.Based on the common pattern and features of agricultural support policies evolution in East Asian typical entities, China’s mainland needs to borrow the successful experience, to promote the support policy transit from the second stage to the third stage, to upgrade the agricultural production efficiency and develop sustainable agriculture, and move the concern of policy to the integration of the whole agricultural industry chain. Currently,the overall support level in China’s mainland is low and needs to be promoted in the short-term. However, due to the limite of Agricultural Agreement of WTO, the room for support growth is extremely limited. The structure of current support is not optimizational. China’s mainland is facing the challenges that other East Asian typical economic entities have not met before. During the unavoidable decline of agricultural competitiveness, China’s mainland can focus the support to key agricultural products and maintain a certain area of arable land, to ensure the food security.