Transfer Of Agriculture Surplus Labor In Japan And The Inspiration For China

There are similarities between the conditions and background of Japan and problems it faced during the course of its transfer of agriculture surplus labor in its rapid economic growth period from 1950s to 1970s and the present situations of our country. It has important significance to our country to review and analyze the course of transfer of agriculture surplus labor in Japan during its rapid economic growth period. I. Several theories relevant to transfer of agriculture surplus labor For developing countries, especially those whose urban-rural differentials are large, Lewis Theory is the most pertinent one among the theories relevant to transfer of agriculture surplus labor. In his opinion, there are two quite different departments, urban industrial department and rural agricultural department, in plenty of developing countries. The former has abundant capital and high labor productivity and the latter is short of capital with low labor productivity and a great deal of surplus labor. The course of urban and rural economic development is the course of transfer of agriculture labor force to urban industrial department until new balance is reached in urban and rural areas, and industry and agriculture in respect of capital, labor and labor productivity etc. The discussion on agriculture surplus labor of our country shall be based on the basic principle of Lewis Theory and paying respect to realizing the third strategy target in the middle period of this century to make feasible forecast on the future of industrial development and the whole economy and thus to determine the appropriate scale of agriculture surplus labor. With this respect, we got the target for making and perfecting all our policies and guide for measures of each specific stage. II. The course of transfer of agriculture surplus labor in Japan There are two ways of constant decrease of employed agriculture population and farming population in Japan during the course of its rapid economic development. The first one is the decrease of new supplementing labor after the death or retirement of old labor. The second one is the transfer of agriculture labor to non-agriculture department. A lot of peasants and farmers can't keep their living purely depending on agriculture. There are more and more phenomena of taking temporary employment, part-time job and homecraft. With the lapse of time, over two thirds of farmers take non-agriculture production, which is supplement at first, as their main work while agriculture becomes their secondary work. The rapid development of parttime farming forms positive interaction with farmers'income increase. The phenomena of parttime farming is the main form of transfer of agriculture surplus labor in Japan during its rapid economic growth period, which is the result of the particular historical stage of low wage and inadequate social security and a unique phenomenon of Japan. We shall notice how the conditions of agriculture in our country resemble those in Japan in this respect. III. Analysis on several correlative factors during the course of transfer of agriculture surplus labor in Japan Size of tillable land —The essential problem of agriculture in Japan is the imbalance of living standards and income of practicians of agriculture and other trades. The cause of low income of agriculture practicians is the low agricultural productivity, which rests with the undersize scale of production operations of agriculture and scrappy of tillable land; Structure ofagricultural products —The influence from the increase of expenses of food and change of structure is crucial on the income of farmers. With the development of agricultural production, starch food gradually decrease while stock productions, vegetables and vegetable oils and fruits foods greatly increase. The change of food structure lays foundation for the agricultural mechanization and great development of farms, forestry stations, nurseries and orchards and thus promoted the fluidness of tillable land and industrialization of agriculture and offered opportunities for the decrease of employed agriculture population and conditions of income increase for farmers; Labor productivity —The improvement of agricultural production level mainly relies on the advancement of labor productivity and the structural adjustment of agricultural production is another way of improving labor productivity, which realize it by increasing products of higher additional value. The transfer of agriculture surplus labor is a result establishing on the basis of improving labor productivity, of which the combination forms interaction; Living standard of farmers —It is explained in respects of consumption and income levels. These two indexes surged in 1960s to 1970s and both of them surpassed those of cities in the middle of 1970s. The rapid increase of farmers'income supported the harmonious development of agriculture and the whole national economy. agricultural policy —Policies on price and tillable land are two must aspects that the government interfered agriculture with. Without these two policies, the present agriculture won't form in Japan. The final target of agricultural policy is confirmed in Japanese Agricultural Standards as "To fill the gap of productivities between agriculture and other industries, improve agriculturalproductivity and increase the income of agricultural parcticians in order to enable them to enjoy equal life with practicians in other industries."The implementation is mainly policies in the following three aspects. Production policy which means that the nation supports the agricultural products of which the demand will expend as estimated; Price policy is to implement policies to stabilize the price of agricultural products, promote the rationalization of circulation and processing of agricultural products, and adjust the import of agricultural products; Structural policy is to help those farmers who are engaged in agricultural production and operation, to support the cooperations between farmers, agriculture and industry and agriculture and commerce, and to encourage the sound circulation of tillable land, improve agricultural structure and thus to accelerate the industrialization and scalelization of agriculture. At that time the policymaker believes that it is impossible to solve the essential problems of agriculture and to change the imbalanced status of interior of agriculture and that between agriculture and inddustry under the situation of great income differentials between practicians of agriculture and industry if the market and price structures developed without control. Balanced development can only be achieved by policy interference of national power. IV. Comparative analysis of transfer of agriculture surplus labor in China and Japan During the course of transfer of agriculture surplus labor in our country, some problems exist in both of the subjective and objective aspects. In subjective aspect, the guideline ever misled, for example, the restriction of flow towards urban areas, over stress on the roles of rural enterprises and etc.In objective aspect, low proportion of urbanization and the long term existance of barriers between urban and rural areas and etc. There are common ground and differences between the national conditions and backgrounds of transfer of agriculture surplus labor in Japan and those in our country. The common ground decide the similarities of the inner drive and ways of transfer of agriculture surplus labor in our country and those in Japan. The differences determine that the procedures, ways and force adopted in China shall be different from those in Japan. V. The Inspiration of the historical course of transfer of agricultural surplus labor in Japan to our country The transfer of agriculture surplus labor is not merely the problems of labor management or of "people," but closely relating to the problems of agriculture, rural areas and farmers and inalienable with the structural adjustment of the whole national economy. To solve the problems of agriculture surplus labor is to solve the problems of the development of rural areas and the coordination and high efficiency of the whole national economic system. The problems of agriculture will find no way out if agriculture is seperated from other industries and vice versa. Economic levers must be emphasized under the conditions of market economy. There are two powerful levers for the transfer of agriculture surplus labor, which are the problems of policy guidance and the drive of agricultural development. The latter can be understood as the problems of development space that shall be created for agriculture as far as possible. This space is the orientation of agricultural productions, the circulation direction of agriculture labor and the guidance of agricultural policies. The development of urban...