5. Mr. Tang Zhengping, Director-General, Department of International Co-operation, Ministry of Agriculture, PRC, presided over the opening ceremony, and invited the representatives of PRC, Italy and FAO to present their opening remarks (see Appendix 4).

6. His Excellency Mr. Liu Jian, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Agriculture, PRC, welcomed all the invited authors and participants to the seminar and extended to them the warm Chinese hospitality. He emphasized the importance of taking the first Agricultural Census in PRC to provide reliable statistical data on the agricultural and rural sectors. He also expressed appreciation to the Italian Government and to FAO for the four co-operative projects, which provided financial and technical assistance to the Government of PRC, especially training and equipment, for conducting the Agricultural Census. He concluded his speech by wishing the seminar every success.

7. His Excellency, Mr. Paolo Bruni, Ambassador of Italy, PRC, expressed his great satisfaction for the participation of Italy in the event, because the Agricultural Census of PRC was a very successful example of international co-operation. He noted the importance of the Italian financial support (US$ 16.4 million) to the preparation and implementation of the census through the four different projects, and the mobilization of the experience and technical competence of a number of Italian institutions that also hosted many fellows from PRC. He emphasized the value of the census results in providing a better understanding of the rural sector both for Chinese prosperity and for the understanding of the world related to agriculture and food security. He expressed the hope that the seminar would become the crowning event in the long and successful trilateral co-operation between PRC, FAO and Italy, and that increased knowledge and policies in PRC, as a result of using the census data, would also have a positive impact at the international level. He concluded by conveying to the Chinese Government and people the best congratulations from Italy for the first Agricultural Census and for the success of the seminar.

8. Mr. Rambadan B. Singh, FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific, congratulated the Government of PRC on the success of their first Agricultural Census and thanked them for organizing the International Seminar. He also welcomed all the distinguished participants and thanked them for accepting the invitation to contribute to the seminar.

He noted that FAO attaches the highest importance to reliable information and statistics on the agricultural sector for informed planning and decision-making. Therefore, it was gratifying for FAO to have been involved with the first Agricultural Census in China’s long history. He also noted that the census represents a success story of international co-operation and that the experience would be a useful contribution to FAO Programme for the World Census of Agriculture 2000.

He highlighted that the census results had now been released and disseminated through publications, CD-ROM and the Internet. The data and the papers presented at the seminar would help in understanding the new picture of PRC’s agricultural sector and some of the patterns of the changes. In ending, he again congratulated the Government of PRC on the enormous commitment to this endeavour, impacting on the whole world.

9. Mr. Zhu Zhixin, Commissioner of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), PRC, welcomed the organisers of the seminar and all the participants, particularly thanking all the staff members of the census organization, the members of the Programme and Organising Committees, and the authors of the papers. He acknowledged the valuable technical and funding support of FAO and the Italian Government that had contributed to the successful implementation and completion of the census. He said that the census had achieved complete success and that the International Seminar would also show the success of the international statistical co-operation. He also stressed the importance of the census results and the results that would be generated by the seminar for PRC’s economic reform and for food security evaluation both in PRC and all over the world, and for the reform of Chinese agricultural and rural statistics.

10. Mr. Alberto Zuliani, President of the Italian National Statistical Office (ISTAT), expressed his honour and satisfaction to participate in the important event of the seminar. He reminded the participants that the output of an agricultural census was crucial for planning and decision making in the agricultural and rural sectors and that was very important for PRC, taking into account that about 80% of its population lived in the rural areas. He mentioned that statistical co-operation had proved very useful in contributing to the development of countries and for this reason ISTAT was involved in many international co-operation projects. He felt that long experience in PRC had been the most important. He congratulated colleagues from PRC for their commitments and successful results, and hoped that the dissemination of the census data and the seminar would stimulate frank discussion on the quality of data, and on the analysis and their economic interpretation. He concluded by saying that he was very proud that ISTAT had been involved with FAO, PRC and the Italian Government in the co-operation projects and thus had contributed to the success of the census.

11. The chairman of the opening session, Mr. Tang Zhengping, thanked the guests for their speeches and informed the participants that, on the recommendation of the Programme Committee, Mr. Zhu Xiangdong, Director-General, Rural Sample Survey Organization, NBS, would be the Chairman of the seminar; Messrs Marcello Gorgoni, Member of the Italy/FAO Technical Review and Monitoring Panel and Hiek Som, Chief of the Statistical Development Service, FAO, would be the Vice-Chairmen; Mr. Luigi Biggeri, Senior Project Advisor for Projects GCP/CPR/020/ITA and GCP/CPR/025/ITA, “Chinese Agricultural Census Results - Processing, Tabulation and Analysis of Census Results”, would be the rapporteur. He also informed the participants about the organisation of the sessions, the presentation of the papers and the discussion.