and agricultural sectors will continue without much relief from demographic changes before 1990. Hence even the rather spectacular shifts in fertility projected for these models during the next few years do not portend an immediate and radical remission in the problems that have hitherto been posed by population growth in the PRC. [Aird, pp. 440, 465-466, and 474.]

Question 9. How may current regime policies affect the efficiency of the Chinese urban and rural labor force in the years ahead through technological change, modernization and education?

When we try to assess the changes in China it may always be useful to maintain a historical perspective as all changes may not be permanent and we can expect that China will experience political struggle between opposing views on the roles of science and technology and how the sector should be controlled and organized. Is there any risk that China will eventually move toward political changes such as have taken place in the Soviet Union and which the Chinese term revisionism? No doubt, the heavy emphasis on economic growth and the use of the intellectual and technological expertise in the country may make it difficult to strike a stable balance.

The new technology and science policy now emerging in China may be an element which is at least partly antagonistic to the objective of reaching the socialist society conceived by Mao and the reasons for this are several: First, to meet the technology requirements of the modern industry the emphasis must be on large systems with a high degree of vertical division of labor with apparent nonegalitarian consequences for management in production enterprises as well as in the related R. & D. institutions. Second, trend toward further professionalism and inequality encourages importation of technology where technological and management solutions developed in capitalist countries must be adjusted to suit Chinese conditions. Third, if this were desired, the integration and coordination of large scale technological projects and the subsequent applications in manufacturing will require professional expertise which must be highly trained and competent. All such people will spend much of their time in central agencies, ministries or offices in the bigger cities with little or at least less time than previously to move into manual labor. Fourth a large scale approach to industrialization also requires improved transportation and communications and new management systems which all lend some credibility to the argument that new forms of social control might develop which are detrimental to the egalitarian interests of the masses of the Chinese populations. .

So, it might be appropriate to pose the following question. The emphasis is on urban technological change will it be possible for the Chinese leadership to maintain a fair balance between urban industry and rural agriculture? Herein we can find three different type problems with regard to changes in technology and science policy. First will the leadership be able to maintain the delicate but necessary balance in meeting the modernization objectives while reflecting the legitimate interests of the various groups in the Chinese society? Second, as the potentially privileged groups will make use of the new situation to further their own interests, in ways detrimental to the majority of the population in the rural areas will this nonprivileged majority create a counterforce in order to redress the balance? Should this be the case the present change in technology policy would create an unstable situation. Third, will the changes create a situation where privileged groups become established as a stable new class to the detriment of the overall, long-term development of China?

It must also be emphasized that the current situation in China is rapidly changing and the structure for encouraging innovations and change in technology and science policy has not been fully worked out. . . . The current debate on science and technology, as reflected in the news media over the past couple of years, can thus only shed limited light on the future development of science and technology in China. [Sigurdson, pp. 533–534.]

Question 10. What special role does the female labor force play in the Chinese rural economy?

Policies toward women in China are one aspect of the overall attempt to transform the whole country. Every change in general policy has engendered a concomitant change in policy on women. After 1949 the policies that were developed for development in urban and rural areas showed marked differences. The differences were most clear cut in policy statements on employment of traditionally marginal groups in the labor force, such as the young, the old, and women. In

contrast to employment of women in urban areas, at no time were women in rural areas officially encouraged to refrain from taking part in production. In rural areas, as policy on the employment of women developed in the early 1950's, women were urged to take part in agricultural production, and increase the number of days they did farm work..

In contrast to the agricultural male population, women of poor peasant origin from the beginning played a crucial role in production teams, as compared to men of the same origin because they were the most skilled of their sex in farm work, since poverty forced them to do farm work from childhood on and often in low and despised jobs such as collecting manure.

Among the women they were usually the most politically reliable as well as the most experienced in farming. In the male population, however, though the poor peasant might be politically most trustworthy he usually was not the most knowledgeable.

The continued insistence that equal pay for equal work must be enforced in the rural people's communes indicates that this principle is not yet universally applied in the Chinese countryside. In perspective, 29 years is probably too short a period to produce a general belief among Chinese that women are the equal of men, when ideas to the contrary have dominated China for more than 2,000 years. [Thorborg, pp. 536-537 and 554.]

Question 11. Will agricultural production trends be raised and cycles of output dampened as a result of current policy and practice?

In the near future there will probably be a sharp increase in grain production as the imported fertilizer plants come on stream and their output stabilizes at designed levels. In mid-1977 six of the plants were reported operating, but probably only one or two were producing at the designed capacity. Five or six more should be in operation this year. A return to normal or better weather is another factor that is likely to cause production to jump in the next year or two. For the past 2 years, even though poor weather has constrained production, overall improvements to the agricultural system, such as irrigation, drainage, and land leveling, have continued

China's grain production plan for the medium term is extremely ambitious. The Government's output target for 1985 is 400 million tons, compared with 285 million tons in 1977

Realistically, the Chinese are likely to fall somewhat short of the 1985 goal. A great and successful effort to achieve rapid growth in the medium term could nonetheless raise total and per capita output well above past levels. If the population growth rate continues to be kept under control, the Chinese might be willing to accept somewhat slower rates of growth in agriculture. Success in securing higher levels of agricultural production would assure the maintenance of at least subsistence consumption whatever the weather, and would help free the rest of the economy from the vicissitudes of the agricultural sector

In the longer term, as yields increase they may well eventually approach the levels that most more advanced countries enjoy today. Rice yields in China now average 3.5 tons per hectare of sown area; if they increased by 50 percent they would slightly surpass the 1975 rice yields of the United States and Greece, for example, although they would fall short of the 1974 yields of Italy, South Korea, and Spain, and well short of recent Japenese yields. In terms of rice yields, China is now in about the same position that South Korea and Taiwan reached in the early and mid-1960's, and that Japan reached earlier in this century With increasing modernization, Chinese yields are likely to move through the levels that Japan reached in the years following World War II, and that South Korea has achieved since the mid-1960's. [Groen and Kilpatrick, pp. 645-646.]

Question 12. Is the PRC of permanent and expanding importance in the world grain market? What type of grain and with which producing countries will the PRC likely trade?

The pattern of grain trade of the People's Republic of China (PRC) shifted abruptly in 1961 when China began a large grain import program. Although the PRC has continued to export rice, it has remained a net importer of grain despite slowly rising per capita grain production. During the 1970's, the annual variability of China's grain trade has increased considerably.

Grain imports have become less important in comparison with national grain production, but continue to provide an important part of grain supplies in the urban areas of northern China, as well as adding significantly to the total supply

of wheat, a preferred food-grain. During the 1970's, grain imports have followed fluctuations in per capita production of grains, suggesting that imports have been closely tied to state grain procurement from rural areas in northern China.

China's rice exports have covered a substantial part of the costs of grain imports and the net cost of grain imports has fluctuated far less than the quantity of imports. The level of rice exports appears to be correlated with the cost of the grain import program and to a lesser extent with the level of per capita rice production. But available information does not provide a full explanation of the determinants of rice exports.

A survey of factors affecting grain import levels suggest that the growth of domestic demand for grains will increase in the future. Increased domestic feedgrain demand for urban livestock raising is also likely. PRC policy appears to favor self-sufficiency in grains, and imports of industrial goods and technology seem to have the highest priority in coming years. Therefore unless China is successful in increasing the growth rate of grain production and state procurements, pressures will build for higher grain import levels and other economic policy goals will be compromised.

The United States appears at present to be a residual supplier of grain and other agricultural products to the PRC. Until this changes, United States grain exports to China are likely to remain highly variable and substantial on an ongoing basis only if the PRC is unsuccessful in holding down grain import levels. [Surls, pp. 653-654.]

Question 13. What are China's technological options for improving agricultural performance?

A common strategic objective underlies the entire program of technological change in Chinese agriculture, specifically the increase in the extent of multiple cropping. In comparable environmental circumstances, where other countries are growing a single crop per year, China seeks two; where others grow two, China seeks three. The impact of this goal on the forms and direction of technological change in Chinese agriculture cannot be exaggerated:

Multiple-cropping dictates extreme earliness as an overriding objective of Chinese seed breeding, at a cost of potential yields and ease of borrowing from foreign breeding programs. Multiple-cropping makes an available supply of organic and chemical fertilizers, which is now becoming adequate by the standards of a modern, single-cropping system, inadequate to satisfy requirements of two or three crops, so that one or no crops can reach optimal yields. It also necessitates the absorption for the foreseeable future of large quantities of labor in low-productivity collection and processing of organic fertilizers, exacerbating the labor-productivity gap between agriculture and industry. Multiple-cropping increases the water requirement in Chinese agriculture, forcing further development of artificial irrigation in areas where rainfall or existing irrigation systems are adequate for only one or two crops, at a significant cost in capital, labor and land encroached on by the irrigation systems. Multiple-cropping creates the bottlenecks in labor and draft animal supply which make mechanization a prerequisite for further intensification, rather than a means of sustaining farm production with a decreased labor force as in other countries. It also forces the continued maintenance of a huge draft animal stock, which reduces grain available for human consumption or meat production. Multiple-cropping, through its requirement of earliness, creates the need for dense planting, whereas other countries have tended to reduce labor and seed production requirements through sparser planting with no loss in yields. In view of the severe cost of increasing the multiple-cropping rate, one would hope that the benefits clearly outweighted those of alternative strategies. Unfortunately, I have seen no evidence that the Chinese have considered any alternatives at least since the 1950's, even though changing technologies may have made earlier appraisals of limited relevance. By now, the efficacy of multiple-cropping has become a matter of doctrine, at least at the official level.

The most plausible alternative would not have been single cropping, except in the north, but rather a maintenance of the status quo ante, a system of doublecropping south of the Yangtse River (rice-rice in the warmer areas, winter wheatrice otherwise), and intensification of production within that constraint. Based on the experience of other countries and the costs and difficulties experienced in changing this system in China, this would have been the "natural" course of development, in the absence of forceful state intervention

Chairman Hua Kuo-feng has been more intimately involved in the promotion of technological change in Chinese agriculture than any other high level leader

except Chen Yung-kuei, and this involvement has encompassed the failures of the Great Leap technological policies as well as successes in irrigation and seed development work in recent years, yet his optimism about further potential is as striking as the 4-5 percent growth target he recently announced ..

As this incomplete summary should suggest, China's program for attaining its targeted growth rates is comprehensive and technically (and probably economically) sound; it responds simultaneously to the problem of accelerating the growth of the laggard regions and crops and that of enlarging potential at the technological frontiers. In its ambition and breadth of mobilization it is comparable to the Great Leap, but, as with the more narrowly-based programs of the last fifteen years, the potential sources of growth have been correctly identified and are not illusory. The open question, then, is not whether the program as stated is sufficient to meet the targets (even if we cannot quantify the potential contribution of each element of the program). Rather, it is whether China can mobilize and organize the resources to carry it out. [Wiens, pp. 700 and 702-703.]

Question 14. Is the current regime's interest in foreign economic relations likely to expand and stabilize? What are the specific prospects of Sino-American trade?

China's foreign trade, although a small component of gross national product, plays an important role in sustaining and modernizing the Chinese economy. A relatively small trade sector, of course, is expected of a vast and populous country such as China, which has extensive domestic resources and a huge domestic market. Yet, the share of trade in China's GNP, only about 5 percent, is low by world standards reflecting the residual role assigned trade in the centrally planned economy and the conservative attitudes toward trade as a result of historical and more recent experiences.

Trade is the balancing sector in the planning process with imports making up for the shortfalls in domestic production and providing goods that cannot be produced in sufficient quantity, or at all, in China. Exports are not viewed as an end in themselves but as a means to pay for imports. Moreover, trade and financial policy has been very cautious, colored by Peking's view of the unhappy experiences with trade in both pre-1949 China and the period of Soviet cooperation in the 1950's. Self-reliance has been the guiding principle although its interpretation has been the subject of some debate in China over the years

While exports will be the determining factors, imports will be the raison d'etre for China's trade expansion in the future. Purchases of foreign plant and equipment will be a major component of China's economic modernization drive, industrial supplies will help sustain the growth in industrial production, and agricultural imports will compensate for shortfalls in the farm sector. Because imports will be tailored largely to export growth, they will likely grow at roughly the same rate over the eight year period. . . . [Batsavage and Davie, pp. 707-708 and 728.]

Two central themes run consistently through the foreign trade policy of China. These are "self-reliance" and "trade on the basis of equality and mutual benefit." In self-reliance, Peking perserves independence by reducing reliance on foreign assistance and by limiting the foreign presence in China. In equality of trade, Peking sees a way to supplement China's own resources without risk of entanglement while creating a useful channel for promoting understanding of China's socialism and other diplomatic objectives .. On the basis of these policies, China is now trading with over 150 countries and has entered into trade agreements with more more than 50 countries

China is now embarked on a massive program to modernize agriculture, industry, science and technology, and national defense in a way designed to propel the PRC into the front ranks of industrialized nations of the world by the turn of the century. To achieve these goals, substantial quantities of complete plants and related technology will have to be imported. But in the past these types of imports have caused ideological problems in the Peking leadership. . . . By 1973 it was safe for one leading trade official to link technological imports with selfreliance

The reality of that policy is seen in the purchase by China during the period 1972-1975 of some $2.7 billion in complete plant and associated technology. After that period, policy shifted again, and brought a virtual halt to the import of complete plants which lasted until the arrest of the Gang of Four in October 1976. Since their ouster, the Hu Kua-feng leadership has stressed the importance of foreign trade in growth of Chinese economic development. Retrenchment of the economy during 1977 prevented as quick a return to large scale plant and tech

nology imports as had been expected in the West. Contracts will be negotiated in 1978, but most new plants will contribute to the modernization program until after 1980. The pace of such purchases will depend on China's ability to expand exports, especially oil, and on China's need for foreign agricultural products. Peking's willingness to increase the use of credit will also affect the pace. [Clarke and Avery, pp. 748-749.]

Question 15. With increased modernization will the PRC be more willing to accept the normal legal practices of the world market?

... Although it remains highly unlikely that the Western legal tradition, which had taken hold in China before 1949, will exert a discernibly strong influence, pragmatism and the need to develop solutions to the problems of managing an increasingly more complex economy may impel Chinese planners to choose selectively from analogies derived from the experience of other nations, developed as well as developing.

It is too early to be confident that a lasting commitment has been made to fashioning and using institutions for implementing policies that decrease the means of mass mobilization and increase the making and application of rules by officials charged with those tasks. Even if policy could change again, though, the present mood and current experimentation reflect an openness and flexibility that are striking by contrast to the policies that dominated the previous decade. [Lubman, pp. 765-766.]

Question 16. What are the PRC prospects for expanding exports to the industrial West to gain hard or convertible currency needed to finance imports?

This paper provides data covering recent exports of the People's Republic of China to twenty hard currency countries. This group of twenty includes all the major industrialized Western countries plus a few countries in Asia, which by virtue of geographic proximity are significant export markets for the PRC..

At $5 billion, 1976 exports to The Twenty countries were about 140 percent greater than the 1972 level.

At nearly $3 billion, China's exports of primary products (SITC 0-4) accounted for 58 percent of the total and were the largest group of commodities exported to The Twenty countries in 1976. Nearly one-half of these exports were food and live animal items (STIC 0).

China's hard currency export capabilities are relatively diversified, with the top fifty items accounting for only 64 percent of trade. There was, however, a relatively large concentration of exports among the top ten items, which comprised one-third of total hard currency earnings from The Twenty. After the top ten, all the remaining items in the top fifty ranking individually contributed on the average of one percent to total hard currency earnings.

The commodity composition of the top fifty items exported to the twenty varied only slightly over the three years between 1974 and 1976. In 1974, 63.1 percent of total hard currency was earned by the top fifty; in 1976, this percentage had risen slightly to 63.6 percent.

textile fabrics (SITC 65) contributed the largest share to hard currency earnings in 1976..

Petroleum and petroleum products (SITC 33) ranked as the second largest hard currency export earner in both 1976 and 1974, and the largest in 1975.

Among food items, the most important have been swine, rice, and seafood (SITC 0013, 0422, and 0313).

The most important manufactured item exported by the PRC was basketwork (SITC 89922), followed by a wide variety of clothing items. Besides basketwork and clothing, the remaining manufactured item appearing on the top fifty was footwear (SITC 85102). (Kravalis, pp. 790, 793, and 794-795.)

Question 17. If Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) tariff privileges were extended to the PRC how might this development affect trade turnover in Sino-American trade?

This paper presents estimates of the amounts by which U.S. imports from the PRC would have exceeded their actual 1976 values had PRC products been assessed at U.S. Most-Favored-Nation (MFN) tariff rates in that year. Our estimates are derived from a detailed econometric analysis of the tariff sensitivity