Drawing upon the Experience and Lessons of the Netherlands and Japan to Accelerate Agricultural Modernization

Abstract

There is an urgent need to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects by 2020 and create necessary conditions for overcoming a potential middle-income trap. This will help us establish labor intensive and modernized industries across all sectors and turn agriculture into an internationally competitive industry, while increasing productivity in order to boost the country’s social progress index and elevate rural per capita income to equal that of urban centers. Thanks to China’s rapid industrialization and urbanization that began in 1978, all the necessary material conditions have been put in place to accelerate agricultural modernization. As a result, our economic and social development is able to provide better job opportunities for the surplus agricultural labor and redeploy them to other sectors. What’s more, we have a strong supply of agricultural capacity to increase production and boost our capital sum. Therefore what we really need is a clear management system. To expedite this process, it is therefore necessary to put into consideration realities of China and draw upon the experiences from other countries. The Netherlands and Japan for example, have adopted different paths that have led to positive and negative outcomes respectively. It therefore is crucial that we draw upon their respective experiences when making comparisons, considerations and references.

Speech at a Workshop on Accelerating Agricultural Modernization sponsored by the China Moderately Prosperous Society Association on April 23, 2016.