Status Of Trade Of Mineral Fertilizer In China And Strategic Research After Accession To The World Trade Organization

After nearly one hundred years of developing, the production of mineral fertilizer in China has obtained great progress, being the biggest country for both production and utilization of mineral fertilizer in the world. Especially after the participation to the World Trade Organization (WTO), mineral fertilizer industry in China achieves new opportunities, at the meantime, faces greater challenges too. After thorough investigation, the conditions of the production, circulation and consumption of mineral fertilizer industry were discussed and major problems in the mineral fertilizer industry were pointed out in this paper. After comparing the rules of fertilizer industry according to WTO criterion and the promise of Chinese government to WTO, it was concluded that there are 4 challenges and 4 opportunities to the Chinese mineral fertilizer industry after its participation to WTO. The 4 challenges are: a) stronger competition in the domestic market after the canceling of import restriction, b) change of amounts and varieties demanding in fertilizer production due to the free market access of agricultural products to China, c) reduction of the market share of domestic produced fertilizer, when the fertilizer distribution became more open, d) severe increase of production costs after reducing of preferential policy to the producer. The 4 opportunities are: promoting the adjustment of its industrial structure, accelerating the innovation of fertilizer marketing system, pushing forward the improvement of traditional fertilization methods, and enhancing the administration ability of the fertilizer industry. According to these challenges and opportunities, 5 strategies were given in this paper: strategy about raw materials and energy resources, strategy about the adjustments of industrial structure, strategy about innovation of fertilizer producer and market, strategy about internationalization development, and utilization of high technology to fertilizer production. In the end, 8 suggestions to the industrial administration were given.