Although China's economic reform began in agriculture, its early success has not been sustained by continuing efforts to promote agricultural development, according to a professor of agricultural and resource economics at UC Davis.
China is still predominantly an agricultural country.
Sixty percent of its labor force is engaged in farming and three-fourths of its population lives in rural areas, Carter notes. In the book, Carter and co-authors Funing Zhong and Cai Fang present a systematic study of China's agricultural policy including the causes of the slowdown in that country' s agricultural output in the last decade.