A Research On Chinese Oil Crops Comparative Advantage And Production Distribution

China is a country with a great population and deficient in per capita cultivated land resource. Over the past decades of years, the consumption of per capita edible vegetable oil in China soars, and both of the structure of edible vegetable oil consumption and the quantity structure of it have varied markedly due to the rigid increase of population and economic sustainable development year by year. The production supply of oil crops raises constantly as a whole, however there exist great differences in the development between the non-smooth variety of the oil crops and the traditional labour-intensive mode of production makes some oil crops lose the comparative advantage gradually. Moreover, with limited cultivated land resources, the production of the oil crops cannot meet the growth of the demand in China and requires importing the oil crops or importing the edible vegetable oil directly in a large amount. After China joined WTO, the domestic oil market has become a component part of the international market, the changes of the oil crops production of the world and the variation of the market price for the international oil crops will exert a great influence on the oil production and its consumption in China. Two soybean crises in the course of importing in recent years with soybean as one of the Chinese main oil crops lead to serious vibration in the soybean production industry and its processing industry. As a large country with great population, China has paid close attention to the issue of the safety of grain, and should show the same concern to the issue of the safety oil. With the background of the economic globalization, the following significant problems have formulated that how to utilize both of the international and domestic markets, two kinds of resources effectively, give full play to the comparative advantages, dispose the agricultural resources of production in China reasonably, arrange the production and development of the oil crops, make a balance between the supply and demand of the Chinese oil via foreign trade.This dissertation adopts and combines normative analysis together with positive analysis, qualitative analysis together with quantitative analysis, static state analysis together with dynamic analysis. Considering the reality that the Chinese oil crops produce, based on the cost and profit materials, the study evaluates and measures the international comparative advantage level of the production of soybeans, peanuts and rape, the three main oil crops of China, mainly adopting the law of Domestic Resource Cost and the Social Cost-Benefit Ratio. It also compares and analyses the differences in soybeans and peanut production between China and the United States, and probes into both the advantages and disadvantages in terms of the production of China's oil crops, and analyzes further the comparative advantages of soybean, peanut, rape, sunflower, sesame and benne as main oil crops in different areas of China on this basis. It is found out that soybean and rape do not hold comparative advantages any more and are positioned at comparatively, inferior place in the aspect of the international comparative advantages ofChina's main oil crops-- soybeans, peanut and rape, while peanut has been keeping the comparatively steady comparative advantage level all the time. The phenomenon is mostly resulted from the labor-intensive production mode of the oil crops that China has been employing, which is also the main advantage of China that it possesses abundant and low-priced workforce resources. Nonetheless, mechanization and large-scale production of soybean and rape are employed abroad, which have substituted workforce's input to a great extent, reducing the production cost, and results in that the domestic resource cost of China's soybean and rape is relatively high. Nevertheless, concerning peanut production, China has more obvious comparative advantages due to the particularity of it, and the difficulty of the grand substitute of workforce by mechanization. Comparative advantage among the areas in the main oil crops soybean, peanut, rape, sunflower, sesame and benne of China, analyse through such methods as the advantage index of efficiency and scale advantage index, etc. It is noticed that there are great distinctions that the production of different oil crops varies among different domestic areas of China because of the restriction of natural resources such as soil, climate, temperature, moisture in different areas, etc. and of environ condition, and the composition of different factors, such as production mode and factor input of various oil crops. The difference on natural and social economic condition among different areas brings up the oil crops comparative advantage. It needs to carry through rational division of work based agricultural areas and carry out specialized production in order to give full play to the comparative advantages.The point of departure of this study is the impact from oil demand due to the population growth and economic growth, and the variation of the development of China's production and supply of oil crops in the domestic market. It makes a favorable discussion about the rearrangement of production distribution of oil crops, combining the background of accession to the WTO of China and taking international, domestic comparative advantage of China's oil crops production as a basis.