Recently, the monograph “Research on China’s Agricultural Welfare Policy” written by Wu Jinjin, a teacher of the Department of Public Administration, was officially published in Economic Press China. The monograph was funded by the NSFC Project “Research on the Cyclical Impact of Local Fiscal Balances on Fiscal Expenditure and ItsMechanism” (71904130) and the Research Start-up Project for Young Teachers of Shenzhen University.
The book “Research on China’s Agricultural Welfare Policy” elaborates on the transformation process of China’s agricultural policy since 1949 and the political and economic factors behind it. The transformation of China’s agricultural policy has experienced four significant policy stages from the pre-reform to the post-reform: the stage of agricultural absorption policy, the stage of agricultural decollectivization and agricultural promotion policy, the stage of agricultural marketization and the stage of agricultural price support and subsidy policy. The theoretical framework of this book to explain the process of China’s agricultural policy transformation includes three main factors and variables, i.e., perception, crisis and public finance. The basic conclusions of this book are as follows: first of all, the policy concept is an important factor in determining the transformation of China’s agricultural policy, and the dominant policy concept determines the basic attitude and policy orientation of the country towards agriculture. Before the reform, the ideology of socialist public ownership, the theory of collectivization superiority, and the national development strategy oriented by heavy industry directly determined the basic agricultural production system and the orientation of absorbing agricultural policy. The evolution of market-oriented concept after the reform and the development strategy favoring urbanization after the 1990s also affected the market-oriented reform of agricultural prices and the development of agricultural promotion policies. After 2000, under the guidance of the new development concept, the price support and farmer subsidy system were seen as an important way to improve farmers’ income and address the weak position of agriculture. Second, while perceptions are crucial to the process of agricultural policy transformation, crises in agriculture and the economy can play an equally important role in both accelerating and slowing down the process. After that, the financial capacity and fiscal system also played a very important role in the transformation of China’s agricultural policy. In some cases, it promoted the reform of agricultural price policy, and in some cases, it determined the strength of agricultural promotion policy and the expansion scale of agricultural subsidy policy.
Professor He Baogang, an internationally renowned political scholar, research expert on China’s rural issues, Chair Professor of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University, Australia, and Academician of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences,wrote a preface and recommended: “Research on China’s Agricultural Welfare Policy” explores the major issues in the rise of China’s agricultural welfare policy, and opens a new field of Chinese agricultural policy research in the future, that is, how China makes up lessons and formulates and implements agricultural subsidy policies. It is a major issue in the new era to change the backwardness in the agricultural competition between China and the United States. Using the theory of modernization convergence, this paper explores the direction and path of China’s agricultural welfare policy development and calls for a new agricultural policy. He also provides a theoretical analysis framework, and conducts a unique and simple analysis from three aspects of problems, perceptions and public finance.
