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Abstract
This study constructs a regional CGE model of China to analyze the differential regional
impacts of China’s WTO accession on agricultural production, trade, and farmers’
income. The results show that China’s WTO accession will generally improve the total
welfare but will widen existing gaps among regions and sectors. It is expected that the
agricultural sector will suffer if only agricultural trade is liberalized, as cheap imports of
agricultural products, particularly grains, will increase and domestic agricultural
production and farmers’ agricultural income will decline. Full trade liberalization, i.e.,
lifting trade barriers in both agriculture and non-agriculture will benefit farmers and
agriculture at the national level. However, the increase in rural income is still smaller
than the increase in urban income, which implies that the rural-urban income gap may be
further widened. Furthermore, among the regions, the less-developed rural areas will
benefit little or even suffer because their major production activities and income sources
are still from agriculture, especially from traditional agricultural activities such as grain
production.