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China's Agricultural Land

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Vaclav Smil
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Official figures show that the total extent of China's farmland has been steadily decreasing since the late 1950s and that it now stands at roughly 95 million hectares (Mha). Divided by 1.243 billion people, China's mid-1998 population total, this prorates to less than 0.08 ha/capita, a rate comparable to that of Bangladesh, equal to only about 60 per cent of Asia's and to roughly 40 per cent of India's mean, and to just 25 per cent of the global average (Figure 1).

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Type
Research Notes
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The China Quarterly , Volume 158 , June 1999, pp. 414 - 429
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1999

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References

1. The two annual Chinese sources are Zhongguo tongji nianjian (China Statistical Yearbook) (Beijing: Zhongguo tongji chubanshe), and Zhongguo nongye nianjian (China Agricultural Yearbook) (Beijing: Nongye chubanshe). Official Chinese data are regularly reprinted in Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Production Yearbook (Rome: FAO, annually)Google Scholar, and in World Resources Institute, World Resources 1996–97 (New York: Oxford University Press, biennially).Google Scholar

2. As all of these figures come from official national statistics collated by the FAO there is no doubt that real values for many poor populous countries may be appreciably different.

3. For more on China's nutritional transition see: Popkin, Barry M. et al. , “The nutrition transition in China: a cross-sectional analysis,” European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol. 47 (1993), pp. 333–346Google ScholarPubMed; Smil, Vaclav, “Feeding China,” Current History, Vol. 94, No. 593 (1995), pp. 280–84.Google Scholar

4. Brown, Lester, Who Will Feed China? (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995)Google Scholar. For critiques of Brown's arguments see, among others: Smil, Vaclav, “Who will feed China?” The China Quarterly, No. 143 (1995), pp. 801–813CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wandi, Jiang, “China poses no threat to future global food supplies,” Beijing Review, Vol. 38, No. 5 (30 01–5 02 1995), pp. 14–16Google Scholar; Rozelle, Scott et al. , “Why China will not starve the world,” Choices, No. 1 (1996), pp. 18–25Google Scholar; Alexandratos, Nikos, “China's projected cereals deficits in a world context,” Agricultural Economics, Vol. 15 (1996), pp. 1–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. The latest long-term population projections are available in United Nations, World Population Prospects: The 1996 Revision (New York: United Nations, 1998).Google Scholar

6. This reconstruction is based on the data in: “China's population, land, grain,” Zhongguo renkou bao (China Population Newspaper), 31 06 1989, p. 1.Google Scholar

7. All available figures are compiled in Crook, Frederick W., Agricultural Statistics of the People's Republic of China, 1949–86 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1988).Google Scholar

8. For details on recent official totals of arable land and on reported loss and reclamation rates see Ash, Robert F. and Edmonds, Richard L., “China's land resources, environment and agricultural production,” The China Quarterly, No. 156 (12 1998), pp. 836–879.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. Crook, Frederick W., “Underreporting of China's cultivated land area: implications for world's agricultural trade,” in China Situation and Outlook Series (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1993), pp. 33–39.Google Scholar

10. Mu (divided into 10 fen, each of them into ten li) equals 1/15 of a hectare, or 666.667 m2. But in some parts of China mu may be as large as 1,131 m2 – or as small as 532 m2: Xinhua, , 28 12 1987Google Scholar, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, FE/W807 A/1.

11. Of course, China is far from unique in this regard: under-reporting of farmland has been widespread in most agrarian societies. The greatest disparity I have come across resulted from an ongoing cadastral survey of Nepali hills: it revealed that the cultivated area of the region is almost four times as large as shown by the official decennial National Agricultural Census figures, with subregional multiples ranging from more than two to more than eight: Gill, Gerard J., O.K., The Data's Lousy, But Its All We've Got (Being a Critique of Conventional Methods) (London: International Institute for Environment and Development, 1993).Google Scholar

12. Walker, Kenneth R., “Trends in crop production, 1978–86,” The China Quarterly, No. 116 (1988), p. 593.Google Scholar

13. Chuanchun, Wu, “Land utilization,” in Geping, Qu and Lee, Woyen (eds.), Managing the Environment in China (Dublin: Tycooly International, 1984), p. 68.Google Scholar

14. This task is particularly challenging in areas where ponds and small lakes, clogged with water weeds and supporting a rich growth of reeds, are mixed with paddy fields and groves of bamboo, mulberries or fruit trees.

15. Quoted in Renmin ribao (People's Daily), 31 07 1989, p. 2.Google Scholar

16. Heilig, Gerhard K., “Anthropogenic factors in land-use change in China,” Population and Development Review, Vol. 23, No. 1 (1997), p. 142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17. These are strictly quantitative comparisons lacking any adjustment for considerable difference in typical soil quality.

18. For origins and activities of MEDEA programmes see Richelson, Jeffrey T., “Scientists in black,” Scientific American, Vol. 278, No. 2 (1998), pp. 48–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. MEDEA, China Agriculture, Cultivated Land Area, Grain Projections, and Implications (Washington, D.C.: MEDEA, 1997).Google Scholar

20. Yield of 10 t/ha is far from the top performance in China's intensive aquaculture; rice harvests of 6 t/ha are now fairly typical in major rice-growing provinces.

21. I have assumed fruit yield of no more than 10 t/ha, less than half of the average yield in the U.S. citrus groves.

22. For rice I have assumed an average milling rate of 70%, 15 MJ/kg of edible energy and 7.5% of protein; for carp I have assumed 15% food waste, 4.8 MJ/kg and 18% of protein.

23. China is now the world's largest producer of fresh-water fish and crustaceans. For details on output and species composition see FAO Fisheries Department, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 1996 (Rome: FAO, 1997).Google Scholar

24. Farmland statistics for these three countries are among the most reliable in Asia, with errors unlikely to surpass 5%.

25. Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, Zhongfa No. 4, translated in Issues & Studies, Vol. 15 (1979), pp. 105–106.Google Scholar

26. Zhaoqin, Cao and Hangzeng, Wang, “China's arable land declines by 9 million mu in 1986,” Renmin ribao, 18 05 1987, p. 1.Google Scholar

27. Bangjie, Yang, “China makes public the plan for using farmland for non-agricultural construction,” Jingji ribao (Economic Daily), 30 06 1987, p. 4.Google Scholar

28. All figures in this table are from the State Land Administration Bureau, Zhongguo ludi nianjian (China's Land Yearbook) (Beijing: Zhongguo tudi chubanshe, 1997).Google Scholar

29. For details on pre-1979 conversions of slopelands, grasslands and wetlands into fields see Smil, Vaclav, The Bad Earth (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1984), pp. 15–68.Google Scholar

30. Reductions in soil erosion can be particularly impressive: annual topsoil losses from a sloping field planted with a row crop (most often corn) can be an order of magnitude higher than in an orchard with a grassy ground cover.

31. Six-fold expansion of domestic fruit supply during the past 20 years has been already noted. Chinese fruit exports (mainly oranges and apples) are now approaching 0.5 Mt a year, and are earning about US$200 million.

32. Guonan, Chen, “Possible changes in China's farmland resources by the year 2000 and possible countermeasures,” Ziran ziyuan (Natural Resources), No. 3 (1987), pp. 1–6, 26Google Scholar. By far the highest erosion rates are on the arid Loess Plateau: 274,000 km2 of its total area of 580,000 km2 have chronic erosion problems, with annual soil loss rates as high as 300 t/ha (or 2 cm/year): Liu, Tung-sheng, Loess in China (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1988).Google Scholar

33. Van Lynden, G. W. J. and Oldeman, L. R., The Assessment of the Status of Human-induced Soil Degradation in South and Southeast Asia (Wageningen: ISRIC/UNEP/FAO, 1997).Google Scholar

34. Farmland loss in rapidly industrializing coastal provinces is almost invariably accompanied by severe water pollution whose effects further weaken the average productivity of cultivated land as do higher levels of air pollution (particularly ozone) and uncontrolled solid waste disposal.

35. During the mid-1990s animal foodstuffs supplied, on average, about 15% of China's food energy, almost 30% of all protein and about 60% of all lipids: FAO, Food Balance Sheets (Rome: FAO, 1996), p. 89.Google Scholar

36. In estimating total grain output the SSB statisticians rely on a common practice of sampling survey cuttings to calculate average yields – but then they inflate them by 20–30% in order to compensate for the under-reported land area: Crook, Frederick W. and Colby, W. Hunter, The Future of China's Grain Market (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1996).Google Scholar

37. China is the world's largest user of nitrogenous fertilizers but when this consumption is divided by at least 140 N/ha of cultivated land the country's average annual applications prorate to about 140 kg N/ha, no more than the German or Japanese national mean. However, typical European and Japanese nitrogen fertilizer use efficiencies are at least 30% higher than the Chinese mean. For more on intensities of fertilizer use see FAO, Fertilizer Yearbook (Rome: FAO, 1997)Google Scholar; for environmental consequences of these applications see Smil, Vaclav, Cycles of Life (New York: Scientific American Library, 1997).Google Scholar

38. For reports on recently approved rules aimed to limit the loss of farmland see “Nation tightens land-use approval,” China News Digest, 20 01 1996 (http://www.end.org)Google Scholar; “Government sets new rules to curb use of farmland,” China News Digest, 18 05 1997.Google Scholar

39. Hanstad, Tim and Ping, Li, “Land reform in the People's Republic of China: auctioning rights to wasteland,” International & Comparative Law Journal, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1997), pp. 545–580.Google Scholar

40. Rozelle, Scott, Guo, Li and Brandt, Loren, Land Tenure, Property Rights, and Productivity in China's Agricultural Sector (Stanford, CA: Food Research Institute, Stanford University, 1996).Google Scholar

41. This is why the assumptions of a study conducted by the Chinese Academy of Sciences – which projects the share of land categorized in the first quality grade rising from 39.8% in 1990 to 50.7% by the year 2025 – may be too optimistic: CISNAR, The Land Resources Production and Population-supporting Capacity in China (Beijing: CAS, 1991).Google Scholar

42. Four of the six published projections of China's grain imports by the year 2010 forecast levels no higher than 18–33 Mt/year (compared to recent rates of 10–20 Mt/year); only Lester Brown and the Overseas Economic Cooperation Fund put the annual total above 100 Mt/year: Qu, Weishuang, “A comparison of seven China agriculture models,” in: The Strategy and Action Project for Chinese and Global Food Security (Washington, D.C.: Millennium Institute, 1997).Google Scholar