The Challenges That China Will Face with Regard to Its Agricultural Policies After Joining the WTO

Even though we have made tremendous progress in our agricultural production over the last twenty or so years, in the overall sense, our country's agriculture is still only in the primary stage of the transition from a traditional agriculture to a modern one, or, at best, in the intermediate stage of this transition. Our agriculture has not changed much from its state of weakness, and overall, we have not turned away from the conditions of negative protection. At this time it is still necessary to make contributions to our country's industrialization. As our agriculture begins to open itself up to the outside world, to deal with these conditions, and to keep up with what is going on in the world, it will face many major challenges. In essence, this is precisely the challenge in store for China's agricultural sector: successful movement toward the outside world will open up a whole new sphere for our agricultural sector; [at the same time,] if our agricultural sector fails to keep up with what is going on in the world outside, it will find itself in a tight spot.