When World Trade Organisation ministers gather in Hong Kong late next year to negotiate new global trading rules, among those pushing hardest to liberalise farm trade will be the bureaucrats from Beijing. That is because China, for reasons of both necessity and perceived advantage, has junked many protectionist ideas dating from the days of Mao Zedong and now wants the world's richest nations to do the same.
These powers - notably the United States, Japan and the European Union - spend about US$1 billion a day to protect their farmers against cut-rate competition from developing nations like China. The motives relate to democratic politics; these countries have fewer farmers as time passes, but those who remain exert great influence. Thus the EU, for example, subsidises expensive Belgian sugar beet rather than import cheaper tropical sugar cane, even if economists consider this folly.
For decades, China has had its own strange agricultural economics. Mao wanted every region, down to the county level, to be self-sufficient in grains for national security reasons, although this meant growing rice in places that made no sense and ignoring more useful crops. That autarchic urge is not completely gone, but it has been both weakened and redefined. This allows Beijing to conclude that its own long-term interests lie in greatly liberalising WTO rules, even if this opens the Chinese food market to others.
Behind this policy shift is a new rural prosperity. Contrary to popular belief, China's own farmers have not been left far behind in the economic surge of recent years. Farm incomes have increased 4 per cent annually since 1985, a healthy rate, although city incomes are up nearly 7 per cent a year. This does not exclude serious problems in the countryside. Pockets of deep poverty persist. And farmers are still often exploited by corrupt local officials - including Communist Party cadres, who are supposed to be their protectors.
Policy changes and the farmers' rising incomes have led to more liberal trade attitudes. China has shifted emphasis from land-intensive crops like wheat towards labour-intensive ones like fruit and vegetables that also create jobs and exports. Conservative party officials still talk of needing grain self-sufficiency, but the term has been redefined. It no longer means producing 100 per cent of everything at home, and now excludes key items like soya beans. China last year imported US$2.8 billion worth from America, and even more from Brazil.
These changes help explain why Beijing now sees advantages in opening the world's food trade, and wants rich nations to cut their farm subsidies. China intends to rely more on importing cheaper bulk products like soya beans and maize, and exporting higher-value processed goods like cooking oil and tinned pork. There is another key reason. China joined the WTO in 2001 under terms requiring it to open its food markets, so it is using the trade talks to win reciprocal gains from others.