44. The organizer of this session was Mr. Feng Nailin, Director-General, Department of International Co-operation and of Food and Agricultural Statistics Center (FASC) PRC; and the discussant was Mr. M. Gorgoni, Member of the Italy/FAO Technical Review and Monitoring Panel.

 

45. Four papers were presented:

(i)“Determinants of Agricultural Productivity in China: A Comparison of the New Provincial Census Data with Official Figures and Some Implications” (E. B. Vermeer);

 (ii)“Regional Comparisons of the Chinese Rural Labor Force” (Dai Wensheng and Yi Danhu);

(iii)“Evaluation of Agricultural Production Conditions of China” (Pang Xiaopeng);

(iv)“An Analysis of Relative Factors to the Improvement of Arable Land Use” (Chen Ziguang).

 

46. The first paper, using the results from the census, explored some main agricultural production factors including land, labour input, size of holdings and crop choice, fertilisers, irrigated area, use of plastic sheets, and agricultural machinery. Comparison was made at provincial level between the census results and the existing data sets of NBS and the Ministry of Agriculture. Adequate factor ratios and indicators were computed. It was pointed out that there were substantial differences between the various data sets, and this affected the results of the economic indicators, with big differences present at provincial level, with obvious economic implications. Special note was made on animal husbandry data.

 

47. The second paper provided a general description of the importance of the Chinese rural labour force (73% of the labour force), and presented a comparison of the rural labour force in the various regions, showing that the distribution of agricultural production elements in the different regions is unbalanced and that the regional economic differences are becoming more and more distinctive and enlarging rapidly. The paper also analysed the causes for the regional differences, and made proposals on the integrated development of the rural economy through the improvement of the quality of the rural labour force.

 

48. In the third paper, a comprehensive analysis and evaluation of the current agricultural production conditions in PRC was presented from the following aspects: the situation of natural resources, agricultural labour force, investment level of agricultural science and technology, the situation of fixed assets used for agricultural production, agricultural infrastructure facilities, utilization of resources, and the production potential.

 

49. The fourth paper first presented a general description of the overall situation of national land use. Then, issues such as quality and use of agricultural land, agricultural investment, land tenure, labour migration and wasteland exploitation were discussed. The paper also introduced a correlation analysis to see how the changes in various variables affected the land use.

 

50. The main issue raised during discussions was that the results of the census had an impact on the perception of the surplus rural labour force and high under-employment, but this perception remained valid at least in the short-term. The relatively low land output ratio and the very low agricultural labour productivity was mainly due to the large volume of rural labour force, and the solution to this problem remained an issue for further study. Further questions on the compilation of an input index, the determination of the weight in compiling it, and on the result of some statistical test for correlation analysis were made.