Studies On The Introduction Of Foreign Agricultural Knowledge In Modern China

After the Opium War, China was reduced to the status of semi-colony and semi-feudal society, its door was opened forcedly by several foreign powers, the suffering China entered into the modern period. Chinese people had realized that the great China was lagged far behind the western countries when the foreign powers were bullying China; the former powerful China has gone with the wind. Many people with lofty ideas had the strong will to make country rich and powerful, so Westernization Movement was started. Qing Government failed in the Jiawu War between China and Japan, the all Chinese people was astonished, at the time, Qing Government has realized the Westernization Movement can not revitalized the backward China, the agriculture must be stressed, so the idea of rejuvenating agriculture had become a stream after Jiawu War.When the wheel of history ran into the Qing Dynasty, the population was increased faster than that of the arable land; the contradiction between population and arable land had been too much sharp in the middle period of Qing Dynasty. Taipin Rebellion had hit heavily the Qing Administration, it caused the agricultural production to shrink, the living standard of farmers got worse and worse. With the open door, the missionaries came to China; they translated some preliminary western books in agriculture and introduced western agriculture for the purpose of doing missionary work. After Jiawu War, some open-minded people thought that learning western agriculture was the key method to narrow the agriculture disparage with western countries. The Wuxu Reform put the work of introducing foreign agricultural intelligence into the administrative track of Qing Government. So the work of introducing foreign agricultural intelligence was not an accidental phenomena, it was inevitable outcome because of the above reasons.The main channels for introducing foreign agricultural intelligence are as follows: To Learn Western agricultural techniques. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the people only knew a few words about the western experimental agronomy; the large scale of it was introduced into China after the Jiawu War. With the rapid development of textile industry, the upper land cotton was introduced into China successfully, the other western advanced agricultural technique were also introduced to China one after another, i.e. new method of breeding and selection; control of pest and diseases; ranifed agricultural technique; soil and fertilization technique; as well as the techniques of western agricultural implement, water conservancy, animal husbandry and vet etc.Introducing and domesticating the varieties of western agricultural crops. To introduce the foreign quality varieties is the simplest and most effective way in agriculture production.In modern time of China, the western varieties of cotton, rice, wheat, cured tobacco, maize, sugar beet etc were introduced and domesticated. The introduction of upper land cotton was the most successful.Inviting foreign agricultural experts and sending people abroad. This is one of most direct way for learning foreign advanced agricultural techniques. In the modern time of China,...