Provincial Agricultural Competitiveness Study

After entering WTO, China has been inevitably involved in the world economy. Great competitions are confronted, as well as opportunities. Regional domestic industries are required not only to have domestic competition abilities, but also international competition advantages. As the base industry and relatively weak industry in China, agricultural has always been greatly emphasized by the government. Relative policies have been carried out and have greatly increased the farmers'income. In 2007, the idea and policy of new countryside construction has been put forward, modern agricultural has been explicitly focused. Documents of central government has explicitly pointed out, that the final purpose of modern agriculture development is to greatly enhance the competition ability of agriculture. But how to enhance the competition ability of agriculture in each provinces? It is a practical problem. Each province has to find its own way to enhance its agriculture competition ability according to its own situation. Just under this background and based on this need, it is theoretically and practically significant to make comparative study on the regional agriculture in China.Sichuan is a"big"agriculture province but not a"strong"one. Agriculture development mostly depends on primary products and the increase of quantity. Intensive procession is very weak. As a"big"agriculture province, Sichuan has its own advantages and weaknesses. In order to overall construct well-off all-around society and Socialism New Countryside, Sichuan must greatly develop modern agriculture, and greatly enhance the domestic and international competition ability of agriculture. So, it is of great theoretical and practical significance to recognize the agriculture competition rank of Sichuan among the whole country, to analyze its current situation and to find the countermeasure,so that Sichuan agricultural is able to adapt the competition of domestic market and WTO rule oriented international market.First, the progress of research home and abroad were reviewed and analyzed, based on the general frame of research on industry competition ability, the theoretical connotation and source of agriculture competition ability were analyzed, and furthermore, the connotation and main content of the research on regional agriculture competition ability were defined. According to some basic principles of index system building, a comprehensive index system of regional agriculture competition ability was built, which was made up of 4 first class indexes and 17 second class indexes; an appraisal method on competition ability based on multivariate statistical analysis was also put forwarded. According to the comprehensive index system, the agriculture competition ability of each province in China were empirically studied and ranked using analyzing methods such as principal component analysis, Systematic Cluster Analysis, competition ability appraisal model based on market-share, data envelopment analysis, etc. Finally, the rank and weakness of Sichuan province was stressed, and according to the practical situation of Sichuan, the fundamental way and policy advices were presented to enhance the agriculture competition ability of Sichuan.The agriculture competition ability rank of 30 provinces in China and classification indicates, there are obvious class divergences between each province. This divergence is all-round, but not partial, it's quantitative, and is also qualitative. What's more, this divergence has not been shortened, but is enlarging. For the third class regions, it has been a significant and overwhelming problem to stop the enlarging trend of this divergence and to catch up with other regions by increasing their agriculture competition abilities.Because of the big divergences between different regions, the emphasis and direction of agriculture development in different regions are not the same. Regional situation and resource advantages, level of economy development and industry development should all be considered to decide the key industry and sector and to develop the agriculture industry which has regional character and comparative advantages, to realize the sustainable increase of agriculture competition ability of each region.The basic conclusions based on empirical study are: the agriculture competition ability of Sichuan is generally at the middle or a little upper level; the production competition ability is strong, and the market advantage is obvious, but the total competition ability is not strong enough. Responding to this character, the direction of Sichuan to increase its agriculture competition ability is to greatly strengthen its overall competition advantage. A fundamental way is to optimizing industry organization, and to develop the farmers'organization of corporation economy.In this paper, the theoretical research and empirical research were combined, and quantitative analysis and qualitative Analysis were combined. On the basis of analyzing the paradigm of industry competition ability research, the connotation and resource of agriculture competition ability were presented; the comprehensive appraisal index system of regional agriculture competition ability was constructed. Principal component analysis and multivariate statistical analysis were adapted to conduct empirical study and rank of agriculture competition ability among each province in China. On the basis of these results, the empirical study of the agriculture competition ability of Sichuan province was given. Finally, the fundamental way and countermeasures were given to increase the agriculture competition ability of Sichuan province. The possible contributions of this paper are:1. Some exploration was made on the perspective of research. This paper was studied on the basis of application competition ability, and was studied from the perspective of regional agricultural economy, and this perspective is able to reflect the relative status of regional agriculture competition ability.2. A bold exploration was undertaken in building a comprehensive appraisal index system of regional agriculture competition ability. Based on industry perspective, and on condition of reflecting the competition ability, this paper designed a comprehensive index system of regional agriculture competition ability which includes 4 first class indexes and 17 second class indexes. This system has tried to eliminate the repeating among different indexes when characterizing competition ability, and has increased the accessibility of indexes, thus reduced a lot of work. This is a bold and useful exploration.3. Multivariate statistical analysis method was applied to conduct comparative study and ranking, which can enrich the theoretical research of regional agriculture competition ability to a certain degree. There are some methods which have been applied in the study of industry competition ability. In this paper, five of them were chosen to be used in the appraisal of agriculture competition ability which is an exploration and new test. Besides, empirical study and ranking based on the latest statistical data were conducted, which can reflect the relative status of the agriculture of each province. This is of some reference value for each province in their development of modern agriculture and increase of agriculture competition ability.4. Numerical study was made on the agriculture competition ability of Sichuan province and the status of Sichuan agriculture in the whole country was recognized. The advantages and weaknesses of Sichuan were analyzed and advices were given to improve the agriculture competition ability of Sichuan, which is possibly to be a reference for the decision making of local governments.