Natasha+Tate's+Project

China and the World Trade Organization: Farmers Foot the Bill



Natasha Tate

Spring 2012 University of Central Florida Dr. Lester and Dr. Walker

=Introduction=

The end of 2011 saw yet another protest in China, this one little different than the "tens of thousands" of others that occur within the nation's borders every year. This time, farmers were once again protesting land rights - a topic that Michael Bristow from the BBC suggests is a common grievance often voiced by rural populations, (1). In recent years it seems like we are constantly hearing of workers protests in China - however, we usually hear about them in conjunction with industrial companies such as Apple or Microsoft. China's economy, in contrast to common belief that it is tied to recent industrial developments, has been been the foundation of the Chinese state for thousands of years. As such, it has been an integral part of their history. The communist revolution of the mid 1900s was kindled in agricultural regions and championed by the peasantry - the modern Chinese state is what it is because of the country's agricultural foundation.

"China was built on agriculture," ("Rice Culture of China", 2).

China's rapidly growing urban population and massive industrial revolution has caused a lot of problems in the agricultural sector. Their acceptance into the World Trade Organization in 2001 poses some complications for the already stressed rural farmers and an already overtaxed environment. While some scholars argue that the country's membership will lead to positive changes within the country, others are critical of the effects that it will have on rural populations. This page aims to explore all of the components influencing China's relationship with the WTO.

toc Why does this analysis matter?

China is undoubtedly a unique country, based on not only its sheer size, but the diversity within the population, the characteristics and limitations of its government and the influence and dominant role of its economy. This said, understanding the kind of relationship between an international trade regulating body and this country is a prime example of what global trade can do for developing nations across the Asian region. In what ways can this body assist in the development of nation-states? From another point of view, in what ways does this organization limit that development?

=What is the WTO?=

First things first - what is the World Trade Organization? An investigation of the WTO website shows a significant investment in explaining this very thing. They describe themselves as an international body that "deals with the rules of trade between nations at a global or near-global level," ("The World Trade Organization"). They strongly push the idea that they are, "above all", a negotiating forum "where member governments go, to try to sort out the trade problems they face with each other." They do operate by a basic set of rules that function to keep trade flowing readily without violating any international laws or knowingly contributing to negative goals or knowingly creating any negative side effects.

This is a wonderful video outlining the basic history and current status (as of 2009) of the WTO, organized in an easy to follow powerpoint presentation:

media type="youtube" key="X-ptS6Ln_ss" height="360" width="480" align="center"

The organization even serves to settle disputes between nation states regarding trade disagreements and the ability to issue repercussions against those states that it deems as violating the common law of the WTO. The organization does not suffer from the same issues as another international body - the United Nations - in regards to enforcing such things as mandatory tariff increases and other forms of discipline. Nations have invested interests in maintaining their membership in the organization as it is the primary method through which they are able to conduct trade agreements with other nation around the globe.

Obtaining membership in the first place is not a particularly easy task - a nation must first apply; second, they must "work out individually with [the WTO] individually what [they, the nation] have to offer"; third, membership terms are drafted; and finally, the General Council must vote in favor of admitting the nation to the organization. This process can take years before a nation receives their membership and can begin to benefit from working with the organization.

When consulting the official website, the WTO comes across as a very positive entity. This opinion is not shared by everyone, however. Quite a few individuals believe that the organization works in tandem with other international bodies to the benefit of themselves or developed nations instead of the benefit of the nation they are 'helping'. Some of this will be discussed in context later.

This video of Susan George is a prime example of the opposing, more negative view of the WTO.

media type="youtube" key="NQ952ba75Yk" height="315" width="420" align="center"

China and the WTO
China, like every other member of the WTO, had a list of agreements they have to comply to in order to avoid negative repercussions. Jennifer Turner and Sun Liang discuss the agreements that most heavily influence agriculture in the their article "(R)evolution of Rural China": elimination of sanitary and phytosanitary barriers on U.S. exports of wheat, citrus and meat; elimination of China's subsides to agricultural exports; adoption of tariff-rate quota (TRQ) system for grain imports; reduction of tariffs on agricultural products to well below 20 percent for major agricultural imports from the United States; liberalization of state monopoly and allowing private companies to engage in agricultural trade," (17-18). After they agreed to these terms, China's 15-year-long journey to join the WTO ended as they were admitted at the end of 2001, (Kym Anderson, Jikun Huang, and Elena Inachovichina 443).

The two then go on to discuss some of the primary concerns regarding the WTO and rural China. They start off by voicing the fear held by individuals in China that the WTO agreement will only attract money into wealth areas, effectively working to only widen the already substantial financial gap between rural and urban communities. Turner and Liang go on to refute this disagreement by describing the ways in which an agreement with the WTO will benefit Chinese agriculture - after the proper implementation of the "new rules of fair and open combination with sustainable investments in agricultural technology, market expansion, and education," (18). They also include improved rural investment in land ownership that would result in farmers actually benefiting from the sale of farmland to industrial industries. They state that redefining rural property rights encourages "sustainable land use and conservation," and that the biggest hindrance to implementing the needed agricultural reform is the lack of authority and funding of the local government, (20).

In all, I find this article to be very informative, but in the context of the information outlined below, it is either rather naive or just simply ignorant of the actual situation. While there is a desire for reformed land ownership, the protests like the one described above demonstrate that what has been done in this sector (read: very little) is not enough. When looking at the situation in China, there is not nearly enough infrastructure currently in place for any of these proposed changes to occur, and based on current trends, the lack of infrastructure is not likely to change much in the coming years. As for the terms outlined in China's admission agreement, there is increasing concern over the country's ability to fulfill these requirements by the 2013 deadline the WTO allotted, (Dorothy Guerrero 2).

The following section is going to explore all of the factors influencing the relationship between the WTO and rural Chinese farmers.

=Internal Factors=

There are a lot of different factors within China that influence the relationship between the rural farmers and the government, which in turn both interact with the WTO. This section examines Chinese agriculture, the environmental situation and how that influences agriculture, and finally the organization of the Chinese government in so much as it interacts with these rural individuals.

Agriculture in China
After the establishment of the People's Republic, China was significantly isolated from outside nations (with the exception of the USSR on occasion), and as such needed to fund all economic growth through internal efforts. According to Shunli Yao, this internally funded industrialization was achieved by setting a "low wage for industrial workers, high price for industrial and a low price for agricultural products as an implicit tax to divert agricultural revenues and private savings into industrial sectors. As such, [the] agricultural sector was depressed," (Yao 1).

Skip forward to the 1980s and China was undergoing national level reforms that "stimulated growth and diversification of crop production besides releasing many from agricultural labor," (Turner and Liang 16). These reforms helped bolster China to a greater international economic standing in the 1990s, but the agricultural growth of this era halted in 1997 and has not significantly budged since then.

The life of the farmer is far from an easy one. Despite the fact that 70% of China's population lives in rural areas, they receive only 30% of the national GDP (gross domestic product). In addition to this fact, farmer's income has increased at an alarmingly low rate since the late 1990s, and by 2000 their income increased by only 1.8%. There is widespread discontent and in 2000 the government identified rural discontent and unrest as "the biggest threat to [the Communist Party's] rule," (16). Dorothy Guerrero presents some startling statistics in her article for Yale Global Online, stating that "250 million Chinese people line on less than $1 per day. Another 700 million or 47% of the population, live on less than $2 a day," (2). Perhaps the most startling thing regarding those statistics is that they describe individuals living in urban areas who work in general labor and where the amount of money flowing on a daily basis is significantly more than that in agricultural areas.One way to measure this is through the use of the Gini coefficient, which is a scale from 0 to 1 that demonstrates the degree of economic inequality within a country, with 0 being total equality and 1 being total inequality. According to Guerrero, "China's Gini coefficient... hit 0.465 in 2004," (3). A score of 0.465 is significant and indicative of an extremely high inequality between rural and urban populations. Again, Guerrrero presents a rather shocking statistic - that around 100-120 million rural individuals are unemployed, about 30% of the total rural population, (3) undoubtedly one of the main driving factors behind the absolutely massive urban migration that has been occurring in China for the past several years. It is predicted that by 2020, 300 million more individuals from rural populations are going to migrate into urban centers. This migration process can almost be seen as traveling both physically and temporally, as urban centers are roughly 10 years ahead of rural populations in the extent of their development, (3). The conditions for workers in urban areas are extremely poor, living on pitifully little amounts of money, sharing small rooms with up to 20 other workers, and clocking upwards of 60-70 hours a week on average, (2). Add to this the likelihood that many of these individuals working in urban areas are sending a good portion of their income to their families in rural areas to help them survive, further worsening their own standard of living in the city.

Land Rights
Compounding this property is the lack of land rights given to the rural population. In the 1980s nation-wide reform efforts, a "land tenure system was instituted to ensure farmers of the rights to keep the land for 20 years," (Yao 2). This tenure policy has either not been implemented properly or abandoned altogether as demonstrated by the riots that take place so commonly within the nation - either way, current policies regarding land tenure are severely lacking.



It is suggested that by pairing with the WTO that these conditions will improve, but the success of WTO policies is dependent upon a top-down fully implemented plan to improve national infrastructure and the standard of living across the board - something China has yet to undertake, and something that China would have an extremely difficult time passing into law and then carrying out, as can be demonstrated by the exploration of governmental organization further below. Several riots at the end of 2011 were regarding land tenure issues - according BBC News, these riots were started by farmers enraged over local governments selling their farmland to industrial companies without "offering proper compensation," (Bristow 1). According to Michael Bristow, who works for BBC News Beijing, "China's property laws... largely deprive farmers of the right to control the land they work," a true extension of the communist notion that there is no private ownership by anyone other than the government, (1). It appears that local governments do give compensation for the land that they seize from farmers, but it is significantly lower than the price that the government gets for handing it over to industrial interests; worse yet, this process appears to be a large source of income for local governments - up to 33% of their total income, (1). While some areas have begun work to improve this issue, like the city of Chengdu, it is far from a wide-spread effort, and all attempts to demonstrate on their behalf gets farmers accused of illegal activities and disrupting social stability, (2).

Meeting Changing Demands
The disparities between rural and urban populations are increasing at such a rate that the rural population can no longer support the demands of the urban communities. Loro Horta explains the changes: "In the past three decade [sic], the country's breakneck economic has led to the rise of a new wealthy class in Chinese society made up of hundreds of thousands of Chinese people whose dietary demands have changed and who consumes more food.... the Chinese were consuming 25 kilograms of meat a year in 1985. Two decades later, its consumption reached 52 kg, and it is expected to climb as high as 70 kg by 2020," (1). In addition to this increase in meat consumption, demand for agriculturally intense products like potatoes and cereals has also increased, as has the demand for seafood - on the other end, however, demand for rice has gone down as a result of the westernization of the Chinese diet, (1).

To accommodate for these changes and to support the demands of the urban population, Chinese agricultural businesses have begun to invest in the fertile lands of Southern Africa in order to meet the demands back home. Countries like Mozambique, Tanzania, Malawi and Angola all entertain Chinese agricultural endeavors. The relationship is more complex that just that, however. As a response for using their arable land, China is investing in helping develop the agricultural sector of it's host countries. For example, in 2008 China pledged to invest $800 million to help "modernize Mozambique's agricultural sector" and plans to quadruple the country's rice production by 2013. Tanzania also received a pledge of up to $400 million to help modernize their agricultural sector, just another part of Beijing's plan to create a "green revolution" throughout Africa that will result in a "rapid increase in agricultural production that results from the introduction of biotechnology, modern irrigation and better managerial skills," (1).

While this program has been seen largely as a beneficial agreement for both parties - the African countries modernizing their agricultural sectors and China meeting the food demands of their own people - critics have come forward against the manner in which this agreement has been carried out. It seems, according to Horta, that these plans were not planned nor carried out in an environmentally sustainable manner and will predictably end up suffering from the same environmental problems affecting and limiting China's own agriculture, not to mention all of the negative health effects of this sort of degradation, (2). These environmental issues are explored in the next section, and while conditions in Africa are no where near this state, it is perhaps the sort of situation that they can look forward to if things are as the critiques say.

China's Environment
//The Great Leap Forward in 1958-1960 saw a dramatic increase in the number of factories – there was a fourfold increase in 1957-1959 alone – along with pollution and more deforestation, to obtain the fuel for inefficient backyard steel production. From the 1960s until the mid-1970s, pollution grew, as many factories were relocated to the interior from coastal areas considered militarily vulnerable. Since economic reform began in 1978, environmental degradation has continued to accelerate, largely due to rapid industrialization, including TVEs [township and village enterprises].// - Jianguo Liu and Jared Diamond, //"China’s environment in a globalizing world: How China and the rest of the world affect each other" (2005).//

Deforestation, erosion and desertification are all pressing problems that have developed over the course of Chinese history and have reached their pinnacle in recent years. Below are summaries and general information on each.

__Deforestation__
In both historic and modern times, logging has provided construction material and energy for the millions of citizens within China’s borders; however, the harvesting of this resource has been conducted largely without the consideration and foresight necessary to realize the drastic shortages that are seen today. In order to meet the demands of the paper product industry, as well as massive construction projects, China began to import a large amount of timber from other countries. The floods of 1998 drove the development and implementation of a ban on logging, forcing an even greater degree of outsourcing their needs. Liu and Diamond describe this process as “exported deforestation”, in which a country imports so much wood to cover their needs that their suppliers suffer from deforestation themselves. They explain, saying “China’s wood imports, both from tropical and temperate countries, have increased sixfold since the ban.” Second only to Japan in their tropical wood imports as of 2005, China entrance into the WTO will only expand the breadth and reach of the need for timber within the country. Liu and Diamond describe the situation with biting clarity, saying that “in effect, this means that China, like Japan, will be conserving its forests by exporting deforestation, already at or close to devastating levels in several countries, including Malaysia, Papua New Guinea and Australia,” (1184).

__Desertification and Erosion__


//“There is a dustbowl developing in China that represents the largest conversion of productive land to desert of any place in the world… and it’s affecting the world.”// - Lester Brown, Head of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. (Metraux and Yoxall 134)

According to Métraux and Yoxall, “China has always suffered from a dry climate and already a quarter of its landmass is composed of deserts – but the situation is progressively getting worse,” (134). With more than a quarter of the country affected by desertification, particularly Qinghai Province and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, people are truly suffering from the results of their land use and abuse. Many sources have been cited as contributing to this problem – from the massive deforestation mentioned above, “overgrazing, along with persistent drought, [to the] indiscriminate use of groundwater” (134). Whatever the cause, the draught has caused the rapid expansion of the desert, which has overtaken some 4000 villages and detrimentally affected the health of over 200 million individuals, (134).

The erosion taking place in China is significant. Liu and Diamond explain:

//"Soil erosion affects 19% of China’s land area, one of the highest figures for any country. Erosion is especially devastating on the Loess Plateau on the middle stretch of the Yellow River, which is about 70% eroded, and increasingly on the Yangtze River, whose sediment discharge from erosion exceeds the combined discharges of the Nile and Amazon, the world’s two longest rivers."//

While one of the most noticeable effects of these combined processes are the near annual dust storms – dust storms that have now reached such colossal size that they affect weather all over northeast Asia and the sediments from which can reach as far as California (Metraux 134) – it is the effect that this mass erosion has on limiting waterway navigation that highlights a true lack of state infrastructure. According to Liu and Diamond, the sediment from erosion piles into China’s lakes, rivers and reservoirs, has “shortened China’s navigable river channels by 56% between 1949 and 1990, and has restricted the size of ships that can use them,” (Liu 1181). This limits the transport of both intranational trade and civilian travel to highways and other high-pollution-emitting modes of transportation, further compounding the environmental impact of the problem, as well as limiting the economic reach of rural farm products.



__Water__
It is reported that 75% of all lakes in the entire nation are polluted, (Liu 1182). Many communities have extremely limited access to clean water. The pollution that contributes to this issue comes primarily from industrial sources that dispose of their waste by simply dumping it into nearby bodies of water, but infrastructural issues also contribute to this issue. The majority of China does not benefit from waste processing facilities and human waste most often ends up dumped into communal water.

As one could imagine, many of China’s water problems are not, and cannot be, limited to certain provinces. Problems exist all along waterways, including the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers, and there are a lot of complicated politics involved in how they are addressed – all too often the result is that nothing is done to control the pollution or clean it up simply because no one will take responsibility for creating it.

The unfortunate reality is “many parts of China including Beijing itself are simply running out of water,” (Metraux and Yoxall i). Per capita, China has only one fourth of the world’s average quantity of water but those resources are not spread evenly across the nation. “Northern China is home to 43 percent of the population, sixty-five percent of the nation’s agriculture, but only 24 percent of the country’s water supply,” (132). The stress this sort of resource limitation has on the population is huge. Individuals in rural areas are more likely to not have any sort of waste filtering facility, and are less likely to have any governmental support to enforce any sort of industrial waste deposit limitations that could occur in urban areas.

__Salinization__
Salinization is “the process by which a soil acquires various kinds of salts, as sodium chloride, calcium sulfate, or the like.” (Webster Comprehensive Dictionary) According to Liu and Diamond, “salinization has affected 9% of China’s lands, mainly due to poor design and management of irrigation systems.” This is not a new phenomenon – salinization has affected populations around the world since the rise of complex societies. For example, as Joseph A. Tainter explains in his article “Archaeology of Overshoot and Collapse”, the Third Dynasty of Ur, located in Mesopotamia around 2100 BCE, expanded their irrigation systems extensively to support the growing population. The initial affect was positive and it allowed them to expand their bureaucratic power in the region; however, “after a few years of overirrigating [sic], saline groundwaters rose and destroyed the basis of agricultural productivity,” (61). The dynasty was able to stagger through five subsequent kings with what crops their over-salinized fields could produce, but eventually they were no longer able to support themselves and the society collapsed.

**What does this mean for agriculture?**
Deforestation, desertification, erosion and salinization are all working against the rural farmer and the agricultural base of the country. China only has roughly 15% of its total area available as arable land, (Central Intelligence Agency, “The World Factbook: China”) compared to the United States’ 18%, (Central Intelligence Agency, “The World Factbook: United States”). The full comparison doesn’t start to materialize until you consider their respective population pressures – China, with a population of 1.34 billion, has to support nearly 940 people per square kilometer of arable land, whereas the United States, with a population of 307 million, only has to support 174 people on the same. Each square kilometer of arable land lost in China to salinization increases the population pressures on the rest of the country.

Technological attempts to improve the productivity of the available land has caused a handful of issues on its own, as “soil quality and fertility, as well as soil quantity, have declined, in part due to long-term fertilizer use plus pesticide-related declines in soil-renewing earthworms,” (Liu 1881).

Organization of the Government
Understanding how China’s government is organized is an important aspect of being able to examine the relationship that the state has with its people. Kenneth Lieberthal, in his article “China’s Governing System and Its Impact on Environmental Policy Implementation,” does a fantastic job explaining this organization:

China has a multilevel political system in which the major territorial levels are: the Center, covering the entire country; thirty-one provinces; more than six hundred cities; over two thousands counties; nearly one hundred thousand townships; and close to a million villages… One territorial level of government contains within its organs several bureaucratic ranks. For example, in the national government in Beijing the State Council (China’s cabinet) is at the top; commissions such as the State Planning Commission are one step down; ministries are another step down; [etc]…

One key rule of the Chinese system is that units of the same rank cannot issue binding order to each other… the natural consequence of this operating rule is that there often is a tremendous need to build a consensus in order to operate effectively in China. (3). This set up is not necessarily unusual – it is the limitations that each territory, to use Liberthal’s term, has over the others. In the multileveled structure of the Chinese government, each level of administration can only issue mandates, regulations and other binding orders to the level directly below it, and no further – “skipping levels is not the norm,” (4). To make this set up even more complicated, there is a de facto deal that outlines the requirements to be promoted within the government – the level the individual is in charge of has to be both economically profitable and socially stable.

This entire set up has what I consider an exorbitant amount of fail points – points at which an individual can manipulate the system for their own benefit. It also decentralized power to such a degree that enforcing any policies consistently throughout the country is near impossible. At the same time, as mentioned above, such little connectivity between regions leads to issues in addressing environmental concerns because nobody wants to take responsibility or blame for it as this would reflect poorly on them and hurt their career goals.

All of these issues effect how the government interacts with rural farmers. The infrastructure needed to promote internal trade of resources does not exist, and the natural pathways offered by rivers and waterways have become significantly blocked because of sedimentary run-off and pollution. There are no unions or workers organizations within China (Dorothy Guerrero, 1), and government officials don’t want to entertain any issues because it would hurt their personal careers – truly it is a surprise that anything gets done at all.

Conclusions

Knowing and understanding all of these factors that influence the relationship between China and the WTO, can membership in this organization result in improving the conditions of rural farmers?

Anderson, Huang and Ianchovichina investigate this question in their paper through the utilization of an economic simulation program. For the full text of their article which includes a full explanation of their methods, click here. For the purposes of this analysis, I will be looking primarily at the results of their simulations. Their results suggest that farms that rely on just labor income will experience an increase in income due to the increase in monetary repatriation from family members in urban areas as their incomes increase; however, farmers that are unable to send family members to urban towns to earn money to send home, that suffer from particularly poor infrastructure and those that are unable to diversify their crops according to price increases will be worse off than before WTO membership was awarded, (452). Considering the amount of farmers that would fall into the second category, it is alarming to consider that the majority of farmers in rural China will suffer because of the effects of WTO policies. This seems to fall in line with the line of thought that the WTO works in favor of industrialized western nations and against the people of developing countries.

In fact, studies show that "there is no necessary connection between free trade and poverty reduction," (Guerrero 1) In addition to this, some worry that the adjustment phase for WTO policies will result in losses and hardship "for some households unless complementary domestic policies are in place to facilitate adjustment and/or compensate losers.... Of particular concern... is that the reforms may cause farm incomes to fall, exacerbating the rise" of rural/urban income disparities, (Anderson, Huang, Ianchovichina 444).

The overall interpretation is that this program is not good for Chinese rural farmers. They will suffer from a decrease in income and a greater decrease in national budgetary resources. Anderson, Huang and Ianchovichina propose several policy responses that can alter this prediction. Primarily, the government needs to invest in rural education and improving the land tenure system such that farmers receive greater benefit when their livelihoods are taken from them when the local government seizes its land back for industrial sale. In addition to these things, the government needs to invest in rural health and rural infrastructure. If China were merely to have the proper inland transportation system that it needs, the soybeans that are produced in the north would be able to reach the oil-extraction facilities on the coast, which would then help put the money from those resource purchases back into the national economy, instead of sending it abroad with imported soybeans, (Yao 12). Another thing that the government could do to help the benefits of WTO membership reach the farmers is to invest in greater R&D to help improve productivity while avoiding over-stripping the land, as well as help train farmers how to use newer technologies and how to navigate WTO trade policies in their own practice.

If, through membership with the WTO, China is able to increase their export market for agricultural goods, this would help increase the incomes of farmers - however, without the policy changes mentioned previously, this increase would only exist for as long as the environment could continue to support current utilization patterns. The WTO itself is increasingly trying to focus on agricultural issues, particularly with the Doha Development Agenda of 2003, which was developed to better outline agricultural trade, but again, without effort from China's government to improve the agricultural sector within the country, these regulations will not work in favor of rural Chinese farmers even so much as to negate the negative impact of general trade agreements as analyzed above.

In all, the China's membership in the World Trade Organization is going to result in the detriment of rural farmers, unless the government steps in on their behalf to improve their rights and access to the market. Even so, the WTO agreement deadline is approaching and the livelihoods of farmers are worsening and we have yet to see any substantial, effective policy change from the government. As it stands, the people who will ultimately be footing the bill for this membership are rural farmers.

=In Context=

So exactly does this relate to our class? What is the relationship between the farmer, the king and the natural world?

The relationship that we see here is a very classic, and rather extreme, example of a predominant king in this relationship. The king, in this situation, is represented by both the Chinese government and the WTO collectively, as they are both exerting political influence and force on the farmers and the environment. This relationship can best be described by James C. Scott's terminology from __Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed__(1998), where //techne// is defined as "technical knowledge,” which is “characteristic, above all, of self-contained systems of reasoning in which the findings may be logically derived from the initial assumptions,” (319-320), and //metis// is defined as representative of “a wide array if practical skills and acquired intelligence in responding to a constantly changing natural and human environment,” (313) ergo, 'local knowledge.' When looking at the relationship examined throughout this page, it is completely dominated by the state and their //techne// approach to proper state functioning. When the national agricultural efforts were no longer able to sufficiently meet the needs of the people, instead of working with the farmers and their //metis//, local knowledge, on how to solve the problem, they took their enterprises abroad where they could successfully implement a top-down, //techne// dominated approach to agriculture to solve their problems. Instead of working with their farmers in such a manner that they invest in the land they work by awarding them the legal basis by which they can own their efforts, they don't even compensate the efforts of the farmers when they seize the land back for industrial purposes.

The 'king' here is largely ignoring both the 'farmer' and the 'natural world' in this equation, and I certainly hope I made it clear just how bad the situation is as a result of this. It is like was said at the beginning of our semester - the relationship between these three entities should be akin to a three-legged stool. In the case of China, this 'three-legged stool' is more of a single stilt upon which the nation is starting to really lose its balance.

=Bibliography=

Anderson, Kym, Jikun Huang and Elena Ianchovichina. "Will China's WTO accession worsen farm household incomes?" China Economic Review 15 (2004): 443-456.

BBC News. "China protests: Authorities 'to investigate land sales'." 25 12 2011. BBC News. 21 4 2012 .

Braga, Carlos A. Primo and Kjersti Brokhaug. "Agriculture and the Doha Development Agenda." n.d. Trinity College Dublin. 19 4 2012 .

Bristow, Michael. "Wukan unrest: Why do Chinese farmers riot?" 15 12 2011. BBC News. 21 4 2012 .

Central Intelligence Agency. "The World Factbook: China." n.d. 19 4 2012 .

—. "The World Factbook: United States." n.d. 19 4 2012 .

china.org.cn. "Rice Culture of China." 2 10 2002. China Through a Lense. 19 4 2012 .

Guerreri, Dorothy. "China, the WTO and Globalization: Looking Beyond Growth Figures." 6 2 2006. Yale Global Online. 14 4 2012 .

Horta, Loro. "Food Security in Africa: China's New Rice Bowl." China Brief Vol 3, Issue 11 (2009).

Lieberthal, Kenneth. "China's Governing System and its Impact on Environmental Policy Implementation." 1997. Asian Development Bank. 24 3 2010 .

Liu, Jianguo and Jared Diamond. "China's environment in a globalizing world: How China and the rest of the world affect each other." Nature 435 (2005): 1179-1186.

Metraux, Daniel A and James W Yoxall. The problems facing China today: politics, economics, health, and religion. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2007.

Tainter, Joseph A. "Archaeology of Overshoot and Collapse." Annual Review of Anthropology 35 (2006): 59-74.

Turner, Jennifer L and Sun Liang. (R)evolution of Rural China. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Special Report, 2002.

Scott, James C. Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. Durham, NC: Yale University, 1998.