Research On The Structure And Characteristics Of China Clam Industry

The research on structure and characteristics of China clam industry is one of the important tasks of the national’twelfth five-year plan’ shellfish industry system. It aims to systematically answer the ’what’,’why’,’good or not’, and ’how’ question in China shellfish industry.Clam industry, a mudflat shellfish, in recent years gradually has been presented many problems in the process of development. Due to excessive exploitation, unscientific aquaculture, marine pollution and marine industrialization, calm’s living environment is increasingly deteriorated, and meanwhile development space becomes increasingly narrow. Facing to unreasonable industrial structure and lower economic benefit, clam industry has come to the brink of an unsustainable development. Whether clam industry could develop in healthy and sustainable way or not, depends on the coordination of government external control, self-regulation and community service, but also the participation of local government, scientific research institutions, farming association, the leading enterprises and self-employed individuals. In the long run, the passive position of clam industry relying on the pull of market has resulted in fast development and excessive expansion. So, in the short run the government may achieve the explicit performance, and the operator may get the temporary benefit, then the market seems to become prospective and achieve a ’win-win’ perfect result. Actually, it has brought a series of negative effects and potential risks behind it. It is necessary to establish a long-term control mechanism to eliminate the negative effect of clam industry and keep the clam industry sustainable development. Of course, the effective operation mechanism links to analysis of clam industry development trends and categories of clam evolution structure and characteristics.As a part of the shellfish research system, the purport of this study is to explore the shellfish industry structure, to know the basic framework, main content and method of shellfish industry chain, and to carry out the clam industry chain structure, the characteristics and performance systematically. As a creative study, study on Red Island clam industry, which describes its development history, evolution and development trends, sums up basic structure, operation condition and characteristics of the Red Island clam, and clarifies the industry chain and value chain, also measures the business performance of Red Island clam industry, then tries to achieve the perceptive effect on clam industry structure, characteristics and performance.To achieve the research target, a series of methods, including questionnaire survey, participating observation, field survey, typical household survey, expert interviews, visit to industry associations and government departments, are adopted. The study concerns not only the clam industry development trends, industrial structure and industrial organization; but also value chain, industry management, industry evolution process and perspective strategy in Red Island. It includes:(1) systematically clarifying the concept of clam industrial structure and objectively describing clam industry scale distribution and spatial distribution;(2) ascertaining not only scale structure, spatial structure, operation structure and market structure, but also labor structure, technical structure, ownership structure and management structure characteristics in Red Island;(3) clarifying industrial chain formation, chain of transmission process and organization mode of industrial chain in Red Island;(4) constructing value chain and measuring the point which produces the value;(5) measuring benefits of typical clam stakeholder and investigating operation situation of relevant clam industry;(6) exploring the main development problems and restriction factors in Red Island.This study, which fills in a research gap in the field of fishery economics and management, comprehensively masters the microeconomic foundation and structural features of typical regional industry; and clarifies its structural characteristics, management behavior, industry performance, industry management and development strategy in Red Island; then finds out a large number of informative data which forms many useful conclusions. The study provides some empirical proof to help the government to carry out regulation and control, and meanwhile supply a methodological enlightenment for related researchers. A few important conclusions are formed as follows:(1) Based on the industry chain theory, two types of industrial evolution path are refined. One, that is the vertical industry chain evolution path in principle, is from clam’s breed, raise to the terminal consumption. Another, that is the horizontal evolution path in supplement, compensates vertical industry chain research. Overall, currently the vertical clam industry chain in Red Island is relatively perfect and more mature. However, horizontal industry chain development lags behind a lot, so more extensive development space should be recognized.(2) Higher aquaculture density is the main factor leading to Red Island clam quality degradation. Assumed Clam species resource and Marine environmental changes directly result in low quality, the fundamental cause leading to the change of the product quality is the incentive mechanism behind these behaviors. If we focus on policies including the cultivation mode changes, large-scale development and proliferation of deep-sea resources, etc, and pay more attention to path research method, the uncontrollable risks would be brought out in the long run.(3) Nowadays, considering profit-driven factor, logistics rapid development and regional comparative advantages in the priority, but also the limitation of region natural conditions and the investment cost, it is not optimal choice to solve the problem of clam breed by so-called technological leap and huge investment. In the short term, it is available and effective to introduce the south high quality clam species resource by promoting ’breedings in the south and raising in the north’ mode and cooperating among regions with the supervision of quarantine and screening.(4) Currently, Red Island clam industrial chain and its organization mode are less efficient and linked. Based on effective organization mode, whether clam industry could achieve the health and sustainable operation or not, depends on the establishment of premise, that is, so called ’separation of three powers’ organization system including breeders, managers, and research units. Breeders in the system must carry out scientific and reasonable farming production,, from concerning the quantity into pursuing the quality; Managers ensure the effective operation of the system as a whole, including normal production, reasonable selection corresponding to the condition and efficient intervention; Research units should focus on social science research, especially rule and regulation research, and meanwhile provide accurate information and reliable reference for managers and breeders.(5) In the different segments of the Red Island clam value chain, the processing segment and selling segment are higher in the value increment. Not only different breeders but also different breeding mode, area, density and scale, could lead to different value increment result in the different breeding segments. The level of processing value increment presents the distinguished difference under these influences below including:firstly different clam product processors, processing patterns and processing degree; then different wholesale and retailer, different clam product rank or origin, different marketing channels. So, actually Red Island clam value increment situation should be not optimistic.(6) China clam industry including Red Island clam has been facing the obscure property rights rule, although marine space use rental and aquaculture permission license supply some guarantee and safeguard for industry entrance and exclusivity. However these are not enough to get rid of the characteristics associated with the public goods. In order to set up clear property rights and reduce the external impact, it is necessary to break the current pattern of marine space which is intensively exploited, to project the reasonable marine exploration space, and to reserve appropriate marine area for development. Public policy target should be based on the existing conditions to improve the existing institutional arrangement and promote management performance, rather than moving to exploit new marine resources.Also, are some important findings in the study as follows:what is pricing mechanism amongst culturists, purchasers, superior wholesalers, inferior wholesalers and retailers? What is initial selling price formation mechanism? Why has there been no business model which integrates aquaculture, catch, process, purchase, sort and wholesale? What is the key point? How to integrate the separate aquaculture situation? In which way the integration could be done? Who would dominate this action? Where are its ecological, economical and social benefits from the cross-region aquaculture mode, that is,’breeding in the south and raising in the north, catching in the north and transiting in the south’? How to measure and evaluate them? Restricted by personal cognitive abilities and other objective conditions, these questions above cannot be found out precisely. In subsequence these problems will be put on the special study, and meanwhile the latest industry development will be concerned.