China has always strived for self-sufficiency in farm products, particularly staple foods. Its rapid industrialization following its opening up to global markets during the past two decades has been making that more difficult, and its accession to the WTO may add to that difficulty. New agricultural biotechnologies could ease that situation. The adoption and spread of some of those biotechnologies in agriculture have, however, raised concerns, particularly over the environmental and food safety effects of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This Paper focuses on possible implications of the GMO controversy for China, since it is prospectively not only a major producer and consumer of GM farm products but also a potential exporter of some of them. It explores the potential economic effects of China not adopting versus adopting GMOs when some of its trading partners adopt that technology. The effects are shown to depend to a considerable extent on the trade policy stance taken in high-income countries opposed to GMOs and/or to liberalization of China’s trade in textiles and apparel.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number
3171.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)