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Abstract
This paper investigates the impact of China's and Taiwan's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) on U.S. and world
agricultural trade by means of a 12-region, 14-sector Computable General Equilibrium model for world trade and production. The
simulation results show that integrating China and Taiwan into the global trading system could induce more competition on labor-intensive
products and reduce their prices. It could drive up the demand for capital and skill-intensive manufactured goods, thus further improving
industrial countries' terms of trade. The expansion of labor-intensive sectors in China could also induce contraction in agricultural exports
from China and increase its net agricultural imports by as much as US$9 billion annually, causing food and agricultural exports from other
regions to increase. Total U.S. food and agricultural exports could increase by about US$2.4 billion annually, with the non-grain crop
sectors gaining the most. The biggest winner from China's WTO accession is China itself. WTO membership could bring a net welfare gain
of about US$30 billion a year for China, a substantial benefit compared with the gains for the USA (US$8.5 billion).