Study On Competitiveness Of Regional Agriculture:Comparison Of Shandong Province And Hubei Provinces

After thirty years'reform and opening up, there is great development for China's agriculture, which enters a new stage. The relationship of demand and supply in agricultural market has changed from one-time shortage of supply to equilibrium of demand and supply and regional and structural surplus of supply. Agricultural growth pattern has changed from labor-intensive to capital and technology-intensive. Agricultural development target has changed from quantity maximization to benefit maximization. The agricultural development is restricted not only by resource and input, but also market, technology, and ecological environment. The competition is intensified and enlarged in agricultural market. The relationship between agriculture and other industries is becoming much closer. Global economic integration brings the new international tendency to China's economic development, that the international and domestic market integration speeds up, and agricultural product market is faced with more and more foreign products. Regional agriculture not only needs the domestic competitive ability, but also the international competitive advantage.China's territory is vast with apparent differences among regions. The study on regional agricultural competitiveness is to consider the potential components, analyze the current agricultural competitiveness, and find the solution to improve competitiveness according to the respective region's condition. It needs to divide the agricultural region and compare the level among regions for agricultural competitiveness study, which is helpful for exerting advantage of agricultural resource and enhancing the competitiveness of product in domestic and international market. Furthermore, China's agricultural competitiveness could be enhanced. Agriculture has been the main industry of Hubei province, yet not developed enough. Enhancing Hubei's agricultural competitiveness and improving agricultural economy is key to "the rise of central China strategy". Agriculture, of Shandong province is well developed as the main industry. Based on the resource and ecology of Shandong and Hubei province, this dissertation compares the competitiveness through the theory model and evaluation index system. The aim is to put forward policy and solution for Hubei province. At the same time, the results would be support for Shandong province to enhance agricultural competitiveness further under sustainable development target so that the agriculture could meet the domestic market competition WTO agreement. This dissertation is of important theoretical and practical significance.Based on the view of regional economics, the whole dissertation studies, evaluates and compares province region's agricultural competitiveness. On the theoretical basis of the Agricultural Economics, Regional Economics, and Competitiveness Evaluation Model, this dissertation attempts to use analysis standard model of economics and adopts the way of combining theoretical analysis with empirical analysis to study Shandong and Hubei province's agricultural competitiveness. The main research includes the system analysis framework constructed for agricultural competitiveness, explanation and influence on provincial competiveness, comparative advantage of agriculture on time and space level, the evaluation index system of agricultural competitiveness, and the difference between provinces under restrictive factors. This dissertation finds the origin of differences for agricultural competitiveness, broadens the comparison horizon between provinces, and sums up international comparison.Through analysis, the conclusions of the dissertation are as follows.The relationship of comparative advantage and competitive advantage is not completely opposite or substitutive; on the contrary, they complement and promote each other in the theory of international trade system. The comparative advantage of regional agricultural products mainly depends on the advantage of price due to scope economy in imperfect competition market. Nevertheless, agricultural competitiveness advantage depends on infrastructure, science and technology innovation transformation ability, the degree of industrialization, the support of related industries, the market demand structure, as well as the governmental policy and management. As a result, it could transform comparative advantage to competitiveness advantage that improves national support agriculture policy system, increases infrastructure investment and scientific research innovation, promotes the related and supporting industries, and improves consumer's demand on agricultural product quality.Provincial agriculture competitive ability differs from the competitiveness of agricultural products. Apart from quality and price advantage, it includes the comprehensive ability in resource, production, operation and service. Provincial agriculture competition ability is consisting of production competitiveness, market competitiveness, technology competitiveness and capital competitiveness. This dissertation analyzes the influence of factors to agricultural competitiveness, such as resource endowment, ecological environment, production equipment and infrastructure, rural market, policy and management, agricultural industrialization and urbanization, international market environment.This dissertation presents space-time dynamic analysis on comparative advantages on agriculture and agricultural products between Shandong and Hubei provinces from the view of production efficiency, cost advantage and disadvantage, price advantage and disadvantage. Through the explaining index, including efficiency advantage index, scale advantage index, comprehensive advantage index and domestic resource cost index, the dissertation finds that Shandong province has more comparative advantage on wheat, corn, cotton and peanut than Hubei province; on the other hand, Hubei province has more comparative advantage on rape, rice, hemp and tobacco.The evaluation index system of provincial agricultural competitiveness is constructed, which consists of ecological resources indexes, rural public infrastructure investment, agricultural science and technology level, agricultural cluster and agricultural market environment. The empirical study is based on the index system. The empirical study shows that agricultural competitiveness for Shandong and Hubei provinces kept rising from1998to2010. However, before2008, the agricultural competitiveness of Shandong province was more competitive than Hubei province. Through decomposition of competitiveness index, the dissertation finds that Hubei province has more advantage on natural resource, which tends to assemble the agricultural comparative advantage. Shandong province has more advantage on industry cluster and market environment, which is tend to increase the competitiveness advantage.According to the influencing factors and each index of agricultural competitiveness, this dissertation analyzes the industry experience of American, Canada, Japan, Holland and Israel in agricultural economic development from the view of natural resource, ecological environment, production equipment, public infrastructure, science and technology, agricultural industry cluster, market environment, system, policy and management. Analysis on the moves to improve agricultural competitiveness in those developed countries is helpful to put forward experience for China's agriculture.The innovative points of the dissertation are as follows.Firstly, the research perspective is relative novel. From the general cognitive perspective, the agriculture in east China is more advanced than that in Hubei province, but the scientific evidence is in demand to judge the difference and its causes between the two provinces. This dissertation starts from provincial agricultural competitiveness, analyzes the influencing factors of transforming comparative advantage to competitive advantage, evaluates the two provinces'agricultural competitiveness, and finds the potential reasons behind competitiveness. The results are not only useful for Hubei province, but also could be the reference for other agricultural provinces.The second innovative point lies in the empirical method and analysis framework. The current papers mostly resort to static analysis on provincial agricultural competitiveness. This dissertation resorts to dynamic analysis on agricultural competitiveness level, potential components. The analysis process forms a relatively perfect analysis framework, which is the combination of theoretical and empirical analysis, static and dynamic analysis.Thirdly, the dissertation obtains a series of valuable conclusion.The second innovative point lies in theory application. Most of current researches evaluate international competitiveness of some agricultural products by use of Diamond Model, which is less used in the study of provincial agriculture competitiveness. This dissertation attempts to expand the application frontier of Diamond Model to provincial agricultural competitiveness evaluation. In addition, the evaluation index system is constructed for empirical analysis; the results of theoretical model could verify the results of empirical mode in order to solve the key problems in study.