TRADE REFORM, THE WTO AND CHINA's FOOD ECONOMY IN THE TWENTY‐FIRST CENTURY

Abstract. The main goal of the paper is to address the policy changes that accompany China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and evaluate the various impacts of the agreement. To do so, we review the contours of past policies and describe the nature of the promises it has made to the WTO. We show that China's WTO commitments are very much an extension of past policies. Second, we show that most impacts will be relatively minor and in most cases the positive effects will outweigh the negative ones. Various institutions will buffer producers from suffering too much.