China’s Hidden Agricultural Revolution, 1980–2010, in Historical and Comparative Perspective

Abstract

China finally underwent its modernizing (i.e., with increased labor productivity and incomes) agricultural revolution in 1980 to 2010, through dynamics unlike those of most other previous agricultural revolutions. It is “hidden” because the revolution has not come so much from the conventional and readily apparent increases of certain crops’ output by weight due to new inputs, but rather mainly by the switch from grain production to more and more higher-value agricultural products like meat-poultry-fish, milk-eggs, and fruits and higher grade vegetables. That change has been driven by a revolution in the food consumption patterns of the Chinese people that came with rising incomes mainly from nonagricultural development. A comparison of China’s agricultural history with others tells about the interactions of multiple factors, not just the role of markets and/or technology, or property systems, but rather their interactions with population-to-land resource endowments, differential rural-urban relations, state actions, and historical coincidences. China’s is in fact most like India’s, rather than “East Asia’s,” though even then with important differences stemming from its revolutionary legacies.