Rural Reforms and Agricultural Growth in China

Abstract China’s agricultural growth in the socialist period prior to the reforms starting in the late 1970s was sluggish. Despite stress on self¬ sufficiency, grain production and agricultural output barely kept pace with population growth. This picture changed in 1978, when China began a series of fundamental reforms in the rural sector. Growth rates in all major sectors of agriculture were accelerated to levels several times higher than the long-term averages over the preceding period (see Table 1).