Determinants of agricultural protection in China and the rest of the world

This paper examines why the Chinese government has distorted its agricultural sector more than elsewhere, in both its antiagricultural and proagricultural periods. The updated panel data on agricultural distortions from 1981 to 2010, compiled by Anderson and Nelgen (2013), are adopted. We find that the different effects of arable land per capita, food self-sufficiency ratios, poverty, and inequality on agricultural distortions in China and the rest of the world explain why China has distorted its agricultural sector more than elsewhere.