On the eve of accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), with the aid of border policies, China was the second largest corn exporter in the world. During the time prior to accession, China's corn prices were estimated to be more than 30 percent above world market prices (Huang, Rozelle and Chang, 2003). China's government explicitly admitted to providing subsidies for corn exports of up to $US35 per metric, which accounted for almost all of the protection that corn producers in China were receiving. During the late 1990s and through 2001, with such high subsidies the nation's exporters were able to sell around 5 million metric tons (mmts) annually into world markets (Gale, 2003). Most of the shipments, especially in the 2000 and 2001, were sent to Korea and Malaysia. With such large shipments, the exports of other nations in the world (especially those from the US that traditionally was Korea's main supplier of feed grains) were displaced.

The most important policy measures are those that improve the quality of rural Chinas human and physical resources and infrastructure that will provide the skills and abilities to rural residents that seek to integrate themselves into the nations industrializing and commercializing cities. Successful development policy, however, must also recognize that modernization is a long process that will depend on maintaining a healthy agriculture and rural economy.

While a rural development plan has many components, we restrict our attention to three broad issues: (a) the nature of Chinas new economic landscape and measures to enhance it; (b) changes that are needed to improve rural government and its partnerships with the rural population; and (c) reforms and investments that can improve Chinas resources: labor, land, capital, water, forests and the environment of the poor.

In this report, we will attempt to answer the following three main questions: What economic

and trade policy reforms have been introduced? What have been the impacts of these

reforms on agricultural production and trade? How has domestic food security at the

national and householdlevels been affected by the reform process?

Electric power for rural pumpset usage is subsidized by all the states in India, the subsidy being estimated at 1.1 percent of GDP. Users are charged a highly subsidized, flat, annual fee that varies with pumpset size. This fixed charge has encouraged waste and raised subsidies over time. Unwilling to bear these costs any longer, states have proposed a range of strategies, including independent regulation, metering of agricultural pumpsets, and raising prices.

This paper seeks to answer the question: By how much may prices be raised? The answer is partly a matter of political acceptability, since raising prices will presumably reduce the affordability of power for marginal farmers, and thus lead to political problems. At the very least, however, prices could be raised for everyone to the level that the marginal user of power is willing to pay for the power he consumes--assuming that he is willing to pay more than he does currently. This willingness is termed the marginal willingness to pay (MWTP) and has been extensively measured in India.

This paper considers two questions. First, why did the Chinese government establish stock markets? Second, how have political interests shaped the key features of these markets? Based on both interviews and statistical analysis, the paper argues that China?s top Party-State leaders attempted to create stock market institutions that allow the state to maintain control over listed companies, and over ?the market? as a whole.