5. Agricultural Transition in Taiwan: Towards a Comparative Study with Mainland China

For example, in the year of 1937, the irrigated area in Taiwan has been 511,000 hectares, out of arable land of 857,000 hectares, around 60 per cent.

For example, in 1962 a leak in the Sanmenxia Dam (三门峡大坝) caused serious destruction of local arable land, and again in 1975 the same dam caused the Banqiao reservoir (板桥水库) to collapse killing thousands of people in Henan in the consequent flood.

In the 1950s and 1960s JCRR accounted for the rapid agricultural growth in Taiwan, and correspondingly for Taiwan’s overall economic growth. The JCRR programme contributed significantly to developing crop and irrigation and created the solid basis of agricultural economy that supported Taiwan’s economic take-off since the 1970s.

At a local level, the most important agricultural association in Taiwan was the Taiwan Joint Irrigation Association (TJIA), originally established in the Japanese colonial period in 1922 to popularise Water Conservancy Cooperatives and supervise community welfare and development. The organisation was extensive, with branches set up by municipal governments in most areas. After the defeat of Japan, the Taiwan Water Conservancy Cooperative Association was reconstituted as the ‘Water Conservancy Association’. In 1948 the Water Conservancy Association was re-organised and became the ‘Water Conservancy Commission’. In 1956, it became the ‘Farming Water Conservancy Commission’, and in 1957 was again renamed the ‘Taiwan Farming and Water Conservancy Promotion Society’, with the responsibility of handling relevant liaison and collaborative affairs. In 1985, the Society expanded to embrace both business and research work and was re-organised as the ‘Taiwan Farming and Water Conservancy Association’. Finally, in 1999 it became the ‘National Irrigation Association’.

Taiwan’s total population in 1952 was 8.13 million persons.

Land reform in Taiwan had a social purpose, as much as an economic one.

China’s first land reform took place during 1949–1952. Here the land reform that this chapter mainly refers is the decollectivisation land reform taking place during the post 1979 economic reform.

HRS and land reform were controversial policies implemented at the beginning of economic reform. In September 1980, the state confirmed the new rural land contractual system, and on 1 January 1984, the Chinese central government announced that ‘this term should be at least 15 years’ to strengthen the implementation of HRS policy. In November 1993, the state announced a further extension of 15 years after the expiration of the previous land contract. The land contract term has since been extended gradually to 30 years in ‘PRC Land Administration Law (Revised)’ published on 29 August 1998.

According to the 2012 statistical yearbook, per capita income in urban China in 2011 was 21,809.8 yuan, while 6977.3 yuan in rural China (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2012).

For example, land, irrigation systems and other natural endowment-based means of agricultural inputs.

For example, 37.5 per cent tax reform and ‘Land-to-the-Tiller’ policy.

Collectively, ownership in China could be regarded as a kind of state-ownership.

Intension of transition or reform policies does not equal the result. During China’s post-1979 agricultural reform, although some policies brought agriculture a short-term rapid output increase, they still failed to re-allocate factor and resource to efficient use in agricultural production. Thus, though agricultural transition or reform has usually been accompanied with output increase, this increase may not bring any improvement to the agricultural economy, because those factor-intensification-based output increases may cause a long-term deterioration in technology selection. Although technology and factor-intensification-based output increases both show an increasing trend in total output, they differ in the value of factor return. This chapter uses factor return as an indicator to distinguish those output increases brought about by technological changes from those factor-intensification-based, to detect possible technology changes in agriculture in Taiwan and China.

Guangdong’s coastal areas, especially Shenzhen and nearby towns in the Pearl River Delta (zhujiang sanjiao zhou, 珠江三角洲) region such as Dongguan, had fewer Hukou restrictions. This area experienced China’s first wave of cross-province labour migration in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The remaining part of livestock will be calculated in later years’ slaughtered livestock or annual assets formation.

Besides the reflection of market price, land rent may also reflect what the landlord can squeeze from the tenant.

Cheung, Steven. A Theory of Share Tenancy: with Special Application to Asia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

Besides, a significant part of the agricultural output rise reflected recovery from depressed levels of production caused by wartime dislocation. In 1949, output levels were still well below the 1937 peak.

For example, the weight of quota price is the percentage of the traded quantity at this price over the total quantity. The weighted average purchase price of agricultural product will give us an unbiased return on agricultural production.

Before the 1990s, numbers of state-owned agricultural farms located throughout China decreased as a rural economy developed after post-1979 reform. Nowadays, most state-owned agricultural farms are located in Northeast of China, such as Heilongjiang and Hainan.

Because of the absence of a rural labour market, to avoid underestimate of wage of farmers, here we use the opportunity cost of the wage of farmers by using a weighted wage calculated from rural workers in TVEs and the state-owned farm workers.

The policy of fixed rent of land at 37.5 per cent was carried out in Taiwan from 1949.

Central Committee Document No. 1. ‘Ten Policies of the Chinese Communist Central Committee and the State Council for Further Enlivening the Rural Economy’ (zhonggong zhongyang guowuyuan guanyu jinyibu huoyue nongcun jingji de shi xiang zhengce, 中共中央国务院关于进一步活跃农村经济的十项政策). Beijing: Communist Party of China Central Committee, 1 January 1985.