There has been much analysis of the potential impact of China's membership of the WTO on world trade in agricultural products but few studies of the actual effects thus far on China's trade performance. This paper compares changes in the competitiveness of China's trade in primary agricultural food and processed food products over the period 1998 to 2003 through a range of comparative advantage measures, the preferred being Revealed Symmetric Comparative Advantage. It also decomposes changes in China's export market share of these products over the period into structural and performance components and identifies where shifts in the global regional distribution of its exports have contributed to changes in its overall market share.