“Industrialization of Agriculture in China”(Nagoya University Press, 2017)

Hisatoshi Hoken(Professor at School of International Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University)

I am extremely honored and grateful to receive the Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the board members of the foundation and the selection committee. I am also greatly indebted to many people, including my advisers, colleagues, friends, and editors. 　This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between Japan and the People’s Republic of China, and it coincides with the 40th anniversary of the Reform and Opening-up Policy of China. It might not be well-known that the policy began from rural and agricultural reform before extending to urban reform and an opening-up policy for international trade and foreign direct investment. To reform the inefficient collective farming under the People’s Commune, the Chinese government introduced the household responsibility system and granted farmers autonomy over their agricultural production and marketing, resulting in remarkable increases in grain production up until the mid-1980s. 　However, since the Chinese government continued to strictly control grain marketing and the technological development of the agricultural sector remained stagnant, socioeconomic gaps between rural and urban households grew considerably. Thus, the government implemented a new agricultural policy called “agro-industrialization” in the early 1990s. Through this policy, agribusiness enterprises (“longtou qiye”) and farmers’ professional cooperatives (“nongmin zhuanye hezuoshe”) played important roles in promoting agglomeration of farmland, specialized large-scale farming, contract farming, and upgrading of agricultural products. My work investigates the fundamental changes in agricultural and rural problems over the forty years since 1978 based on field interviews and microdata collected through questionnaire surveys. 　Although I was constantly humbled and overwhelmed by the diversity and drastically changing circumstances of Chinese agriculture, I devoted myself to conducting my research referring to the outstanding works of great predecessors. It seems that the selection committee has evaluated my attitude toward academic research positively in honoring me with this prestigious award. This award greatly encourages me to engage in further Chinese studies, and I will do my best to contribute to the development of academic research in developing countries.

Profile
1972: Born in Tokyo, Japan 1995: B. A. in Economics, Hitotsubashi University, Japan 1997: M. A. in Economics, Hitotsubashi University 2015: Ph. D in Economics, Hitotsubashi University 2000-2017: Research Fellow at Institute of Developing Economies (IDE), JETRO, Japan 2004-2006: Visiting Research Fellow at China Center for Economic Research (CCER), Peking University, China 2013-2014: Visiting Professor at Department of Economics, University of Toronto, Canada 2014-2015: Visiting Professor at School of Public Affairs, Zhejiang University, China 2017-present: Professor at School of International Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan