China has made significant commitments in WTO accession. With the elimination of non-tariff measures, such as quantitative restrictions and licensing, tariff and tariff quota have become the only two instruments for China to regulate agricultural trade. However, the average tariff rate of China's agricultural products is only 15.2%, which is 1/4 of the world average. In addition, China has ad valorem only tariff, and there is no overhang between the bound and applied tariff. China has also made a commitment of not using SSG to protect domestic production in times of import surges. The weighted average tariff is only 3.6% for major agricultural products that the U.S. exported to China, such as edible oil seeds, cotton, grain, animal products, and dairy products.
China is by far the most open market of agricultural products in the world. From China's accession to WTO to 2015, the import volume of China in terms of agricultural products has increased from 11.8 billion dollars to 116.9 billion dollars, an annual increase of 17.8%, and a deficit of 46.2 billion dollars. China is now the largest importer of agricultural products, and in the front pack of importing products such as soybean, rapeseed, rice, barley, sorghum, cotton, sugar and milk powder. As China's largest source of imports, the U.S. has already made great profits from exporting agricultural products to China. In the meantime, the U.S. has provided large subsidies to agriculture, so as to enhance its competitiveness and export more to China.
II. With the practical need of safeguarding food security and livelihood for small farmers, and against the background of agriculture being exposed to injuries due to lack of tariff protection , the Chinese government has to reinforce its support for agriculture.
Agriculture in China, by its nature, is different from that in the U.S.. This difference is, on the one hand, illustrated by small-scaled household farms in China. The average production scale of China is 0.66 ha per household, 1/400 of that of the U.S.. Even Heilongjiang Province, with the richest land resource in China, has an average production scale of only 3.04 ha per household. The average production scale in 13 main grain-producing provinces is only 0.73 ha per household. On the other hand, the difference is that China's agriculture is subsistence in nature, and most farmers are subsistence farmers as well, out of whom a large proportion still live in poverty.
For them, agriculture is not only an important way of acquiring basic supplies for life, but also the most practical choice for employment, income raising, poverty alleviation, and development. At the same time, agriculture in China to a large extent, plays such a function as a substitute for social welfare, and shoulders the responsibility of the latter, but at the cost of sacrificing efficiency and effectiveness.
The utmost task for agriculture in China is to safeguard food security and livelihood security for millions of small farmers. In recent years, facing the impact of excessive imports, the Chinese government has to reinforce support for agriculture as its tariff plays a small role in protecting domestic production. However, China's support to agriculture is still very limited considering the large rural population. The U.S. government claimed that China provided 100 billion dollars of support to farmers, even if we calculate with this figure, the average support for every Chinese farmer is only 161 dollars, nowhere near the support given by the U.S. government to their farmers.
Measures taken by the Chinese government to safeguard the livelihood of small farmers are on the one hand, necessary for safeguarding food security and livelihood security; and on the other hand, an inevitable requirement for China to honor its commitment in efforts to deliver on the UN Millennium Development Goals. It has been 30 years since the reform and opening-up, China has lifted 600 million people out of poverty, accounting for 90% of the world's total. The World Bank spoke highly of China's achievement, calling it "the fastest large-scale poverty alleviation in human history". China has made great contributions to the UN poverty reduction mission.
