Accurately judging why China's economy cannot ignore agricultural indicators
To accurately assess China's economic situation, one must fully and deeply recognize the excellent situation of China's agriculture. A uniformly strong agricultural economy is itself the most direct and most effective testimony to China's stable economic growth. The excellent agricultural situation will not only play a role in securing supply and boosting confidence as a foundation-strengthening anchor for China's current economic transformation and development and its steady entry into the new normal, but will also exert an indispensable influence on world economic stability.
Recently, due to the downturn in some economic data in the first half of the year, as well as factors such as recent stock market fluctuations, some unoptimistic and even pessimistic voices about China's economic situation have emerged at home and abroad. Apart from lacking a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the fundamentals of China's economic transformation and development, these voices share another obvious flaw: they downplay or ignore the important role of agriculture in China's economy. As a “big player” in the global agricultural economy, China's agriculture has a crucial impact on the global economy, and judging China's economic situation while ignoring agricultural indicators can only be one-sided, superficial, or even wrong.
How is China's agricultural situation? The answer has a striking word: highlight. From the spokesperson of the National Bureau of Statistics to economists, a common view is that the agricultural situation has been a prominent highlight in China's economic development in recent years. There are many data points reflecting this highlight. Besides the well-known continuous increase in grain production, which has ensured that the Chinese people's rice bowl is mainly filled with Chinese grain, there are also many data points on the output of other major agricultural products as well as investment and consumption. For example, in terms of per capita possession of major agricultural products, nearly all have exceeded or approached international levels. China's per capita possession of vegetables is 540 kg, 3.5 times the world average; per capita fruit consumption is more than 20 kg higher than the world average; per capita consumption of poultry eggs is nearly twice that of the United States and the European Union; and the overall per capita possession of meat, poultry eggs, and aquatic products has basically approached that of the United States.
The increase in the output and production capacity of major agricultural products means increased agricultural input, stronger scientific and technological support, and growth in major means of production such as agricultural machinery, which in turn directly promotes growth in other industries and increases farmers' incomes, thereby bringing production consumption and living consumption in the entire countryside into a new stage. An indisputable fact is that, with the steady advancement of agricultural modernization and urbanization, important work such as appropriately scaled land management and farmland improvement, the orderly transfer of farmers and the construction of small towns, major water conservancy projects and rural water, electricity, road, and network construction, major medical insurance and rural old-age security is being continuously accelerated, and the level of development is constantly rising. This has not only brought tremendous changes to the rural environment, but has also brought tremendous business opportunities in investment, employment, and consumption. In recent years, many enterprises have transformed and invested in agriculture, and numerous entrepreneurs have entered the agricultural “blue ocean” precisely on the basis of the fundamental judgment that agriculture has broad prospects.
It should further be noted that in the process of China's deep economic transformation and development, agricultural transformation and development is still running ahead. Rural reform, with innovation in the rural land management system and mechanisms as its core content, has given rise to new types of business entities, green agricultural growth, the agricultural internet, rural financial reform, and other aspects of quality and efficiency improvement. The acceleration of rural reform and innovation has broadened the field of agricultural input, gradually transforming the previously rather single pattern of land input and output into a full-chain, wide-field pattern of input and output. At the same time, because of the added weight of green development, it has promoted an increase in the proportion of input in science and technology, informatization, seeds, and the environment, making the internal impetus for sustainable agricultural development even stronger, thereby creating broader and stronger pull and support for economic development.
Of course, agriculture's share in GDP is not high; this is a general law of economic development. However, as the country with the largest agricultural population in the world, a low agricultural share precisely shows that the structure of China's primary, secondary, and tertiary industries is more coordinated, and a uniformly strong agricultural economy is itself the most direct and most effective testimony to stable economic growth. The excellent agricultural situation will not only play a role in securing supply and boosting confidence as a foundation-strengthening anchor for China's current economic transformation and development and its steady entry into the new normal, but will also exert an indispensable influence on world economic stability. If China's agriculture were poor, global agriculture would panic. Therefore, to accurately assess China's economic situation, one must fully and deeply recognize the excellent situation of China's agriculture, thereby grasping the overall situation and riding the momentum forward.