China's Virtual Water Flows In The International Trade Of Agricultural Products

As a fundamental nature resource and a significant economic factor,water resource has become an important international issue.With the development of economy and population,water problem has been increasingly severe in China.According to the international experience,virtual water trade can be a useful tool to relieve the pressure on water resource.This paper measures China's international virtual water flows from main agriculture products trade in the period 1987-2013.The results show that China is always a net importer of virtual water and the net import has been increasing greatly from 2003 at an annualized rate of 15.43%.In 2003,the net virtual water import from main agriculture products was up to 121 980.15km3.Meanwhile,soybean was the main source of net export and net import,accounted for separately as 36.25%and 84.06%.Korea was the biggest trade partner of virtual water export,accounted for 29.06%.And Brazil was the biggest of import,accounted for 50.74%.According to the Decomposition Analysis Method,the decreasing virtual water export volume was mainly driven by the decreasing export scale,while the increasing virtual water import was mainly driven by the increasing import scale.The net virtual water import from agriculture products not only relieved China's pressure on water resource and reduced global water consumption.But the virtual water export form China's export of agriculture products failed in saving global water,which suggested that China's virtual water strategy could be improved by exporting agriculture products with lower virtual water contents and higher economic value.