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The purpose of this paper is to identify the impacts of financing constraints on the quality upgrading of China's agri-food sector.

Our empirical study is performed using the “distance to the frontier” framework. We employ a merged sample of Chinese agri-food trading firms based on Chinese firm-level data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China and Chinese customs data. To verify robustness, we test whether the results hold when using different definitions of quality upgrading and alternative proxy variables for product quality and financing constraints. To examine the heterogeneous effects, we generate subsamples by firm location, export destination and the product sophistication of exports.

The results suggest that financing constraints have a significant negative impact on the product quality upgrading of Chinese agri-food export firms. In addition, the negative impacts of financing constraints are more severe for firms close to the quality frontier than for those far from the frontier. These results are robust to various checks. Moreover, the heterogeneous effects of financing constraints on quality upgrading are identified when the sample is split according to firm location, export destination and the sophistication of export products.

This paper reviews and applies some recent studies in the literature to investigate the relationship between financing constraints and the product quality upgrading of agri-food export firms in China. Overall, the results of this paper could be considered of importance for promoting the quality upgrading of export products in the China's agri-food sector.

The objective of this study is to investigate how the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affects firms' financial management in China's manufacturing sector. In addition, the authors analyze the changes in various financial indicators before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Further, the authors make a cross-country comparison of the COVID-19's impact on financial management between China and Romania.

The study uses the balanced panel data of 2,272 manufacturing listed companies from 2019 to 2020, and applies the t-test method and multiple regression method.

The results show that firms' financial performance in most manufacturing sub-sectors decreased during the observed period. In addition, the authors find that equity financing, proper liquidity management and an expanded firm scale can improve firms' financial performance. The authors further compare the results with the Romanian results, and find that the negative impact of debt-to-equity ratio on firms' financial performance in Romania is greater than that in China and the positive impact of financial autonomy ratio and working capital ratios is greater in China than that in Romania.

The findings can help corporate managers make the best financial management decision in response to crisis.

This study is one of the pioneers that analyze how manufacturing companies carried out their financial management during the COVID-19 crisis in the Chinese context, and provides a cross-country analysis of corporate financial management practices in China and Romania.

The purpose of this study is to assess the potential economic cost of the COVID-19 pandemic on China's macroeconomy and agri-food system and provide policy recommendations to stimulate economic growth and agri-food system development.

An economy-wide multisector multiplier model built on China's most recent social accounting matrix (SAM) for 2017 with 149 economic sectors is used to assess the impact of COVID-19 on China's macroeconomy and agri-food system. SAM multiplier analysis focuses on supply chain linkages and captures the complexity of an interconnected economy.

The paper finds that both the macroeconomy and agri-food systems are hit significantly by COVID-19. There are three main findings. First, affected by COVID-19, GDP decreased by 6.8% in the first quarter of 2020 compared with that in 2019, while the economic loss of the agri-food system is equivalent to 7% of its value added (about RMB 0.26 trillion). More than 46m agri-food system workers (about 27% of total employment) lost their jobs to COVID-19 in the lockdown phase. The COVID-19 affects the employment of unskilled labor more than that of skilled labor. Second, when the economy starts to recover during the second and third quarters, the growth rate in the value added of the agri-food system turns positive but still modest. Many jobs resume during the period, but the level of agri-food system employment continues to be lower than the base. The agri-food system employment recovery is slower than that of other sectors largely due to the sluggish recovery of restaurants. Agri-food system employment drops by 8.6m, which accounts for about 33% of the total jobs lost. Third, although the domestic economy is expected to be normal in the fourth quarter, external demand still faces uncertainties due to the global pandemic. The agri-food system is projected to grow by 1.1% annually in 2020 with resuming export demand, while only by 0.4% without resuming export demand. These rates are much lower than an annual growth rate of 4.3% for the agri-food system in 2019. The results also show that, without resuming export demand, China's total economy will grow less than 1% in 2020, while, with export demand resumed, the growth rate rises to 1.7%. These rates are much lower than an annual GDP growth rate of 6.1% in 2019.

The results show that continuously reducing economic dependency on exports and stimulating domestic demand are key areas that require policy support. The agri-food system can play an important role in supporting broad economic growth and job creation as SMEs are major part of the AFS. Job creation requires policies to promote innovation by entrepreneurs who run numerous SMEs in China.

This paper represents the first systematic study assessing the impact of COVID-19 on China's agri-food system in terms of value added and employment. The assessment considers three phases of lockdown, recovery and normal phases in order to capture the full potential cost of COVID-19.

To achieve the dual goals of decarbonization and food security, this paper examines China's carbon footprint reduction in 2050 based on current mitigation strategies.

Considering publications as featured evidence, this study develops an investigation of agricultural decarbonization in China. First, the authors summarize the mitigation strategies for agricultural greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the existing literature. Second, the authors demonstrate the domestic food production target in 2050 and the projection target's projected life-cycle-based GHG emissions at the commodity level. Lastly, the authors forecast China's emission removal in the agri-food sector in 2050 concerning current mitigation strategies and commodity productions. The authors highlight the extent to which each mitigation strategy contributes to decarbonization in China.

Practices promoting sustainable development in the agri-food sector significantly contribute to GHG emission removal. The authors find mitigation strategies inhibiting future GHG emissions in the agri-food sector comprise improving nitrogen use efficiency in fertilizers, changing food consumption structure, manure management, cover crops, food waste reduction, dietary change of livestock and covered manure. A 10% improvement in nitrogen use efficiency contributes to 5.03% of GHG emission removal in the agri-food sector by 2050. Reducing food waste and food processing from 30% to 20% would inhibit 1.59% of the total GHG emissions in the agri-food sector.

This study contributes to policy discussions by accounting for agricultural direct and indirect emission components and assessing the dynamic changes in those related components. This study also extends existing research by forecasting to which extent the decarbonization effects implemented by current mitigation strategies can be achieved while meeting 2050 food security in China.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate changes of China’s agri-food exports to Germany caused by China’s accession to WTO and the global financial crisis in a quantitative way. The paper aims to detect structural breaks and compare differences before and after the change points.

The structural breaks detection procedures in this paper can be applied to find out two different types of change points, i.e. in the middle and at the end of one time series. Then time series and regression models are used to compare differences of trade relationship before and after the detected change points. The methods can be employed in any economic series and work well in practice.

The results indicate that structural breaks in 2002 and 2009 are caused by China’s accession to WTO and the financial crisis. Time series and regression models show that the development of China’s exports to Germany in agri-food products has different features in different sub-periods. Before 1999, there is no significant relationship between China’s exports to Germany and Germany’s imports from the world. Between 2002 and 2008 the former depends on the latter very strongly, and China’s exports to Germany developed quickly and stably. It decreased, however suddenly in 2009, caused by the great reduction of Germany’s imports from the world in that year. But China’s market share in Germany still had a small gain. Analysis of two categories in agri-food trade also leads to similar conclusions. Comparing the two events we see rather different patterns even if they both indicate structural breaks in the development of China’s agri-food exports to Germany.

This paper partly originally proposes two statistical algorithms for detecting different kinds of structural breaks in the middle part and at the end of a short-time series, respectively.

The purpose of this paper is to examine patterns of recent changes in China's international export trade in vegetable products between 2001 and 2005 following China's membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and to measure consequent changes in its export competitiveness. It also aims to consider infrastructural issues in relation to supply chain and food safety issues which may affect China's future potential export growth in vegetables.

The comparative advantage of China's vegetable sector is measured through an export specialisation index. A trade‐shares accounting framework is used to identify the sources of change in China's aggregate market shares. An import demand function for China's vegetable exports is estimated.

The paper finds that China has a comparative advantage in vegetable production and exporting. Although there have been negative structural changes in vegetable imports in many of China's major overseas markets, particularly East Asia, China's export share of those markets and its overall world market share has increased since WTO membership. China's export growth rate has exceeded the global average for most vegetable categories. Penetration of SE Asian markets has been price driven, but there is little evidence that China's WTO membership has enabled greater penetration into EU markets for its vegetable exports.

There have been many studies of the potential impact of China's WTO membership on world trade in agri‐food products, but none examining its actual impact in the labour intensive vegetable sector. Although the methodologies applied are well established, their empirical application in the context of China's vegetable export sector in this article are original, and present a context against which to view China's future vegetable export prospects.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential of agri-biotech to play a role in meeting the world’s food, feed, fiber and fuel needs. Using case studies, policy developments in the key Asian countries of China, India and Japan are also scrutinized to determine the extent to which they enable or obstruct biotech’s potential.

The authors first examine some key challenges facing the agriculture and agri-food sector and the potential role biotech can play in addressing them. These challenges include feeding the world’s growing population, improving nutrition worldwide, dealing with allergen risks, reducing nutrient and chemical loading in watersheds, addressing water scarcity issues, and reducing waste in the food system. The authors then turn their attention to the agri-biotech systems in three Asian giants, including China’s centralized governance approach, India’s central-local policy and regulations, and Japan’s pragmatic and evidence-based regulatory framework.

Each nation has evolved its own system of governance based on the different challenges facing the society, the recognized potential of different biotech interventions, and citizens’ collective perceptions regarding both the potential and the risks that biotech innovations embody. Systems that are less evidence-based appear to be more discretionary and therefore are less predictable in their outcomes. This increases risks to prospective exporting firms and importing firms, driving up system costs and effectively serving as barriers to entry and to trade. It also dampens and distorts entrepreneurial and innovation incentives.

From the review and observations the authors then discuss ways and means of establishing priorities through a risk assessment framework in which key risks are enumerated and assessed in terms of their likelihoods and their conceivable consequences. Such an approach would allow challenges to be met with a degree of foresight and adaptability.

The sometimes disjointed, sometimes strategic use of biotech regulations have fragmented markets and created fiefdoms which undermine the potential of novel technologies to address the challenges facing society.

For illustrative purposes, the authors touch on land and water governance, regulatory and institutional bottlenecks and reforms and the potential for agri-biotech to play an elevated role if vested interests and obstructions can be overcome.

This study draws on research and literature from several disciplines. It also includes discussions relating to bureaucratic and administrative behavior which erodes the extent to which markets can be contested. This results in balkanized markets and non-cooperative behavior that undermines and distorts incentives for entrepreneurial effort and innovation. That such behavior takes place in markets and disciplines that are fundamental to assuring food security, nutrition and health, as well as good governance of scarce water and land resources is of considerable concern.

The purpose of this paper is to study whether, of China's food and agriculture (agri-food) export, the trade relationships along the extensive margin can transform into short-term ones, and further convert into long-term ones along the intensive margin with survival and maintenance, especially, under what kind of conditions these transformation realize successfully, and what the factors are and how they impact on the length of the trade relationships duration.

The paper comprises three stages: decomposing China's agricultural export data (1999-2008) into highly disaggregated three distinct parts; with the Kaplan-Meier (KM) nonparametric estimation, discovering the practical source of stable and long-term export growth, and the threshold at which the short-run trade relationships deriving from newly established ones convert into long-run ones successfully; by semi parametric estimation through Cox proportional hazard model, preliminarily examining the possible impact of different factors on the trade relationship's hazard rate and duration.

The paper reveals that China agri-food trade pattern at the product level is surprisingly dynamic with newly established trade relations being more likely to fail. While the frequent volatilities of short-term relations at the extensive margin could be used to evaluate the source of short-term export growth especially and effectively, the pattern of negative dependence together with the threshold effect of duration indicates, only when these short-term relations live longer than four years will they substantially contribute to a stable and prolonged export growth. Simultaneously, trade duration significantly correlates to importing country's development status, region it belongs to, product processing degree, export experience and geographical space between trading partners.

To avoid the likelihood of misleading when estimating quantitatively the source of long-term export growth, researchers should be cautious in accurately evaluating the impacts of all possible factors on the two trade margins' performances, which is beyond the scope of this paper though, and a matter of ongoing work on the research agenda.

The study presents a set of important policy implications. Now that turnovers along the extensive margin have little impact on long-term China agri-food export growth, it turns out that improving export survival would result in significantly higher and stable export growth.

By distinguishing the survival of trade relationship channels from their deepening, the discoveries in the paper are crucial to understand the different role the intensive and extensive margins play in China agri-food export growth. The diversified hazard rates of export relations in different duration intervals suggest that the constant hazard rate assumption in Melitz and Bernard et al. is in some sense not appropriate.

The purpose of this paper is to review China’s past returns in a period over the last 40 years to public agricultural and rural investments to highlight the importance for future strategic investments in China’s agri-food system and in rural areas.

The paper synthesizes research findings from previous studies and reviews more recent trends. Based on the main findings, the authors provide forward-looking guidance for China’s investments agriculture and rural areas in the context of emerging global and domestic trends in agriculture, food security, and nutrition.

Public investments in the agricultural research and development (R&D), rural education, and rural infrastructure have been shown to have significant positive returns to agricultural growth as well as to reductions in poverty and regional inequality. Returns to overall agricultural GDP were highest for agricultural R&D, followed by education, roads, and telephones. Investment in education had the greatest returns to poverty reduction, as well as to nonfarm GDP and overall rural GDP. Investment in agricultural R&D had the second greatest returns in term of poverty reduction, and was also a close second in returns to nonfarm GDP and overall rural GDP following education. The rural infrastructure spending also saw significant returns to poverty reduction, largely through growth in agricultural and nonagricultural sectors. Investments in agriculture and rural areas will continue to be important, as China and the world face emerging challenges amidst a changing global landscape, particularly regarding climate change, rapid urbanization, nutritional imbalances, and food safety concerns. In addressing these emerging challenges, continued support for agricultural R&D and innovations can play a key role.

The paper highlights research findings on key investment areas that will be increasingly important for China’s agri-food system, and provides guidance in the context of emerging trends impacting food security and nutrition.