China heading for big nation of int'l agricultural cooperation

New China's international agricultural cooperation has proceeded from small-scale "imports" to large-scale "imports" and "exports" since its founding six decades ago, and it is currently playing a crucial, decisive role on the international arena.

Polyethylene sheeting, water sprinkling irrigation, chicken breeding through mechanical means, the net-pen fish culture, the nursing of seedling in greenhouses and the use of agricopter or aero-planes in farming or afforestation -- all these record immense achievements scored in China's international agricultural cooperation in the last 60 years. In fact, the nation's global agricultural cooperation has gradually taken the opening-up mode with multi-dimensional arrangements that span a wide range of realms.

Most agro-techniques China has put to use today cannot depart from international agricultural cooperation, and a lot of agro-technologies with distinct Chinese characteristics have been improved or "Sinificated" based on agro-techniques imported, noted Lu Xiaoping, deputy director of the International Cooperation Department under the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture.

The road for China's international agricultural cooperation can be divided roughly into three phrases, namely, the first phrase from the establishment of new China in October 1949 to December 1978, the second phrase following China's reform and opening up in December 1978 and the third phrase as of the nation's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In the early post-national liberation days, China imported from the former Soviet Union, the East Europe and some adjacent or neighboring countries such farming techniques as wheat close-planting and cotton pruning and the wide application of chemical fertilizers, insecticides and tractors. Meanwhile, China initiated agricultural aid to more than 30 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America in about two decades from its early post-liberation days to the late 1960s.

In the second phrase of China's global agricultural cooperation as of 1978, however, China forged agricultural cooperation ties with more than 50 nations worldwide. This kind of cooperative relationships brought to China such farm skills as the extensive use of low-toxic insecticides, methods of farm products processing and keeping their storage fresh and the introduction of plastic sheet mulching.

To cope with needs from the expansion of agricultural industry, China after 1978 started to introduce or bring in foreign aid or investment so as to alleviate its fund shortages and help beef up the all-round agricultural production capacity.

Meanwhile, China put to use economic assistance gratis from the World Food Organization (FAO), other international agencies and developed nations, managed to utilize low-interest loan projects from international financial institutions like the World Bank and foreign governments in a bid to enhance its basic agricultural production and help spread agro-sciences. In three ensuing decades between the early 1979 and the late 2008, approximately 18,000 companies from overseas came to invest in China's agro-business, involving a total investment of 29.45 billion US dollars.

Furthermore, in the last eight years after its accession to the WTO, China has established long-term and stable relations of agricultural cooperation with more than 140 countries and leading world agricultural organizations and financial institutions.

During this three-decade period, China has substantiated its export advantages with such labor-intensive farm products as vegetables, fruits, livestock and aquatic products along with a rapid rise in the Chinese trade of agricultural products. At the same time, its domestic markets have turned increasingly evident in their reliance on the imports of soybeans, cotton and vegetable oils. In the words of Lu Xiaoping, the import of soybean can save for China much water, land and other natural resources, as soybean growing requires much land space.

Enunciating the topic for China's agriculture to "go overseas", Professor An Yufa with elite China Agricultural University in Beijing, cited the Sino-Philippine Center for Agricultural Technology (PhilSCAT) as a promising and successful program in agriculture, which has focused on the high-yielding hybrid rice. To date, China has set up some 30 likewise agricultural demonstration centers in Asian, African and Latin American nations, contributing positively to agricultural development and food production in developing countries in these respective regions.

Compared with other projected investment overseas, explained Lu Xiaoping, agricultural industry is pertaining to people's life and wellbeing; and so doing agro-business is much more protracted and complicated, as it has to set much higher and more rigid demands for infrastructure development. Hence, he concluded that the overseas investment of China's agro-business is still in the primary stage nowadays.

At present, the relevant policies relating to the overseas investment of China's agro-business is well under way, and it would surely help improve the overseas environment for China's agro-business greatly.

By People's Daily Online and contributed by PD reports Zheng Zhi, Yang Fan, Shen Yinlai and Duan Dehu