CHINA'S GRAIN DEMAND AND SUPPLY: TRADE IMPLICATIONS

This study reviews research on China's grain demand and supply. The purpose is to comment on the outlook for China's trade in grain and grain-based food, but also to identify the sensitivities of the projections of China's grain demand to key parameters. The paper will therefore 1) review a set of projections of grain demand and trade, 2) examine studies of major factors considered to affect grain demand in China, 3) comment on some trade and production policy issues based on a new projection that takes into account the effect of changes in population structure. A simple supply side assumption is used in this study. Findlay (1996) contains more discussion of supply side issues. Work reported here on the demand side is largely based on the study by Wu and Wu (1994) using official urban household survey data as well as recent results obtained using CERC-MoA rural household survey data (Wu, 1997). Our particular interest in this paper is the sensitivity of the outlooks for consumption and therefore trade to changes in