China´s rice supply and trade: Constraints and potential

Rice is the dominant staple crop and also is crucial to maintain food security in China. This paper provides empirical evidence on the supply, demand and stock of China rice from the econometric estimation of the elasticity with respect to the price and non-price factors, the main purpose is to identify the key variables of determining rice supply, to predict demand, supply and trade of China´s rice in the foreseeable future. The result indicates that the elasticity value of the own price is 0.046; the elasticity value of labor input is 0.09. The price elasticity of demand is −0.115 and −0.140, the income elasticity of demand is −0.157 and −0.216. The predicted result shows that the total consumption will have a decreasing trend, but the total production will have an increasing slightly trend and the net export of China rice will rise in the coming decades.