Evaluation Of China's Agricultural Support And Analysis Of Policy Effect For The Period Before And After WTO Accession

China's economy maintains very high growth rate during more than two decades of "reform and opening-up" policy period. But "Three Nongs" issues (agriculture, countryside and farmer) are still very serious in rural China: weak competitiveness in agriculture, widening rural-urban income gap and backward rural development. Furthermore, China has changed from net agricultural exporter to net importer after the accession into WTO. Therefore, adjusting agricultural policies and increasing agricultural support in order to promote the agricultural development become the most important task for the Chinese government. The objective of this dissertation is to put forward policy recommendations to the government by evaluating the changing agricultural support level and structure for the pre-and post-WTO period, and by analyzing the effect of policy implementation.On the basis of the research objective, this paper includes following major contents: 1. Analyze the changes of China's agricultural policy before and after WTO from an international perspective by using historical and comparative methods. 2. Measure and evaluate the support level and structure of China's agricultural policy by using the OECD methodology. The analysis focuses on the impact of agricultural policy on national economy, on general service provided to agriculture collectively, on the agricultural producers and on the farmers' income. 3. Analyze quantitatively the effect of policy implementation by adopting econometric and statistical approaches. 4. Put forward the policy recommendations for reforming and optimizing China's agricultural support.The following conclusions can be drawn based on the research:The total support estimate (TSE) has increased obviously after China's accession into WTO. The average level of TSE almost reached to 300 billion yuan from 2002 to 2004. Among various components, the fast increase of general service support estimate (GSSE) contributes most to the increase of the TSE level, GSSE accounts for about two third of the TSE. The producer support estimate (PSE) has exceeded 100 billion yuan. However, peasant income did not benefit much from the support policy (less than 4%). Furthermore, the average per capita support level and average support level on per hectare basis lagged far behind other developed countries. Therefore, China is one of the countries with lowest support to the agriculture in the world. Market price support policy plays a key role (more than 60%) to the level of PSE, new agricultural policy, especially the agricultural tax reduction has also big influence on budget payments. In addition, supporting level of crop products is higher than that of livestock products; supporting level of land-intensive products is higher than that of labor-intensive products; supporting level of import-oriented agricultural products is higher than that of export-oriented agricultural products.