Introduction

Abstract

In recent years, China’s grain economy has been the subject of intense study and concern. The focus has been the country’s capacity to feed its population and the impact on the world grain market of any shortfalls in her grain production. While careful research has shown many of these concerns to be overstated, the development of China’s grain economy remains an issue of major significance. It relates not only to the above questions, but also to the nature of China’s economic reforms and to the problems of a transitional economy. This volume approaches these topics from the perspective of the development of China’s grain marketing system. The focus is on the development of the domestic marketing system, but this system cannot be considered in isolation from the linkages to world markets. Factors affecting the design of trade policy are the theme of the final chapter of the volume. Before that, a number of other issues in the domestic system are reviewed, including the pace and content of reform so far, the development of wholesale markets, and the growth of a complementary financial system.Along the way, a series of implications of these reforms are highlighted, including the links between reform and productivity growth, between events in grain markets and inflation in China, and between reform and stockholding decisions, and thereby trade. A special interest is the impact of marketing reform on regional trade patterns in the domestic market