1. In January 1997, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) conducted the First National Census of Agriculture.  Financial support was provided by the Government of Italy and technical assistance was provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) through a series of projects spanning a period of thirteen years.  As one of the last activities of these cooperative projects, an International Seminar on China Agricultural Census Results, was held in Beijing, PRC, from 19 to 22 September 2000. The seminar was attended by 99 persons from 17 countries. This document provides a summary of the proceedings of this seminar.

2. The census was the largest and most complex agricultural survey undertaken anywhere in the world.  Over seven million enumerators were recruited and trained to collect data from all 215 million rural households and in more than 740,000 villages throughout the country.  The first results of the census, showing summary data at the national and provincial levels, were released in early 1998.  Detailed results were released during 1999. 

3. The census covered not only the structure of agriculture, as normally included in agricultural censuses, but also many other aspects of the rural economy. The census provides an enormous amount of economic, geo-physical and sociological information about the rural population in China, and the results have generated a large amount of interest. The seminar was intended to be a forum for persons interested in understanding the results of the census and its implications for the rural economy and the potential development of rural China.

4. The programme for the seminar is shown in Appendix 1, and was prepared by an International Programme Committee (see Appendix 2). The seminar was organized to provide an introductory session, followed by twelve thematic sessions, with the presentation of invited papers focusing on both census and economic aspects in rural China. A list of the invited papers is shown in Annex 1 and published in Volume II.  A set of contributed papers, prepared mainly by Chinese authors, was made available and disseminated at a Poster Session during the Seminar. These papers presented analysis at provincial level, sometimes for more characteristics than dealt with in the invited papers. A list of contributed papers is shown in Annex 2 and published in Volume III.

The list of participants is given in Appendix 3.