Introducing the China Agricultural Economic Review

Citation

Xin, X. (2009), "Introducing the China Agricultural Economic Review", China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol. 1 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/caer.2009.40601aaa.001

Introducing the China Agricultural Economic Review

Article Type: Editorial From: China Agricultural Economic Review, Volume 1, Issue 1

As the Editor of the new journal China Agricultural Economic Review (CAER) I would like to take the privilege to say some words about the motivation of launching the journal and how it came to you. I sincerely thank those people who have helped us in launching the journal.

Why do we need CAER?

China’s agricultural economy and rural development has never been so important for the Chinese people. China has had to feed its increasing population with declining arable land. The worries about food shortage and general inflation began to prevail once again in China starting from late 2003 when agricultural prices began to rise drastically (Xin and Wang, 2008). Moreover, the urban-rural income gap keeps widening and the contribution of this to China’s overall inequality has been relatively large and has increased somewhat (Sicular et al., 2007). How to fight against the food shortage and rising urban-rural income gap has been a question for the Chinese Government for years.

The Chinese agricultural economy and that of the rest of the world have been deeply integrated, especially after China’s accession to the WTO. Originally the Chinese people believed that the globalization of world economy made it possible for the Chinese people to buy those agricultural products for which China has no comparative advantage, from the international market. The escalation of agricultural prices world wide in recent years, however, casts doubts on this accessibility. China has become an important agricultural trade player. What happens in China’s agricultural sector in turn, also affects the world agricultural trade. This then affects the food availability and food prices of the international market and peoples’ livelihoods.

The integration of the Chinese agricultural economy with that of the rest of the world calls for studies and efforts to promote the mutual understanding of the Chinese agricultural economy, the global agricultural economy, the links between them, and the impacts of the non-agricultural economy. Owing to the importance of Chinese agriculture – important not only for China but also for the rest of the world – it is extremely valuable to introduce Chinese agricultural development experiences and agricultural research to the world. Meanwhile, the rest of the world is also eager to understand more about what is happening in the Chinese agricultural industries. Furthermore, scholars from both within and outside China also desire to learn from each other.

We are happy to see that great efforts have been made both within China and the rest of the world. The number of studies on these aspects has been increasing drastically in the last decade. A number of these studies were published on journals such as the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Economics, Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, China Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and the American Economic Review, etc. These articles in turn invite more research on these issues. However, the number of articles published in the journals mentioned above is not comparable to the number of quality studies. One of the reasons is that although there are a few journals in Chinese with limited international circulation, there are not any journals in English that concentrate specifically on the Chinese agricultural economy. Quite a number of studies on China and world agricultural economy are published in working paper series and reports and thus have limited circulation. This surely affects their publicity and their impact on both policy-making and the academic field.

We would like the journal of CAER to fill this gap. That is why we started the journal. We expect that CAER will act as an important academic exchange venue for scholars and policy makers that are interested in China and world agricultural economy.

How does the CAER come to you?

My colleagues and I have long been planning to launch a specific journal in English that concentrates on the Chinese agricultural economy and the linkages with the rest of the world agricultural economy. The idea came to us as early as in 1999. We talked with the people in China Agricultural University (CAU), the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), and Peking University (PKU). Most of them are our leaders, teachers, classmates and friends. They encouraged us and we owe a lot to them for their support. The difficulties at that time were shortage of money to start a journal, no space to set up an editorial office, and limited skills to edit English articles.

An opportunity arose in 2001 after China joined the WTO and China became more open to the international world. International interests in China’s agricultural economy grew rapidly. Professor Fu Qin and Xiuqing Wang, the Former Dean and Deputy Dean of College of Economics and Management of CAU, and I had a 3 hour discussion about launching a new journal named CAER. They spared no efforts to support me in starting the journal. The difficulty at that time was that my English skills were not good enough to manage the CAER journal in English. The costs of inviting academic people who had good English language skills, especially native speakers of English, were prohibitively high for us. We finally chose the alternative way-part of the articles in Chinese and part of the articles in English. We sought efforts from Professor Zhangyue Zhou of the University of Sydney (who is now in the James Cook University and Associate Editor of the CAER), Professor Albert Park of Oxford University (who was in University of Michigan at that time), Professor Henry Kinnucan of Auburn University, Professor Scott Rozelle of Stanford University (who was in the University of California at that time) for help with the English language. These people were so generous with their precious time that they agreed instantly when we asked for help. My colleagues in CAU, Professor Weiming Tian, Professor Xiurong He, and Professor LapingWu, joined us to push forward the start of the journal. We were very lucky that China Agricultural Press (CAP) agreed to publish the journal. Professor Wenwu Ke, the Director of Agricultural Economics Department of CAP edited the journal more carefully than any other books published in his department. We also got support from the “211” and “985” programs of CAU. So our baby began to grow and everything was ready. We started the journal and the first issue came out in January 2002. More that 2,000 copies of the first issue of the journal were sold within months, which encouraged us to spend more time on the journal. We were even happier to see that more quality papers flowed in. The anonymous referees helped us substantially to develop a good reputation for the journal. A lot of people contributed to the journal in different ways, such as Richard Dawson of CAU, Won W. Koo of North Dakota State University, Wen S. Chern of Ohio State University, Yaohui Zhao and Feng Lu of PKU, Naihua Jiang of Yangzhou University.

During this period my colleagues, Xiuqing, Weiming, Laping, Xiurong, Zhanyue, Fu Qin and I had never stopped seeking international publishers for help to start a journal completely in English. The mixed dual language limited the international scholars’ access to the quality papers in CAER. Zhangyue and I talked about this via international phone calls on many occasions. Professor Jikun Huang, the Director of Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences encouraged me a lot when I asked him for his opinions on this. A chance came again when the Emerald office in Beijing dropped me a message about the co-operation in publishing journals. I sent a message back to Mr Michael Fang, Emerald Country Manager for Mainland China, on 13 June 2007 and started exploring the possibility of co-operation on an English-language journal – CAER. Mr Fang was very supportive and helped my colleagues and I to prepare the proposal to be submitted to the Emerald committee. We sent e-mails to Professor Daniel A. Sumner of University of California and Professor Henry Kinnucan of Auburn University to invite them to join in the editor group. They accepted our invitation instantly. We then started to invite Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) members. My colleagues and I are deeply impressed by the quick responses from all the current members of EAB. They sent their ideas and comments from time to time during the preparation of the proposal. We are also deeply impressed by generous help from Professor Bingsheng Ke (The President of CAU), Professor Xiangyong Tan (The President of Beijing Technology and Business University), Director Fu Qin of Institute of Agricultural Economy of CAAS, and other friends. They provided very constructive and helpful comments on the proposal.

Ms Claire Jackson, Regional Development Team Leader of Emerald in the UK, gave us a quick response and a number of suggestions as soon as she got the proposal. The day of 19 September 2007 was a very nice day. I got the following message from Claire around 11 p.m: “I’m delighted to let you know that the referee comments were extremely favourable and the Board has accepted the proposal for official launch”. I picked up the phone instantly and called my colleagues in the middle of the night. They were very excited at the news and we had a big meal the next day. Is it not a big event? We are very grateful to Emerald for their generous help in this. We started to prepare for the first and next issues of CAER. Claire and I exchanged more than 100 e-mails on how to run the journal and the details of the procedure. She came to CAU twice to discuss with us about launching and marketing the journal. The Co-editors and Associated Editors, Daniel, Henry, Zhangyue, Xiuqing, Weiming, Laping and Xiurong all are actively involved in the process. Helen Evans, the New Launch Assistant Publisher, and Victoria Buttigieg, at that time the Emerging Markets Assistant Publisher as well as Xuxia Zhuang, the editorial supporter in Beijing all helped us greatly from the start. Later on Dr Baozhong Su joined the editorial office and he shared a lot of work. The first issue of the CAER now comes to you.

About the Editor

Xian Xin Deputy Dean and Professor of the College of Economics and Management of China Agricultural University in Beijing. He is also a research Associate of the Center for Rural Development Policy (CRDP) of China. He visited the University of Sydney as a Senior Visiting Professor and worked as post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Economics of the University of Western Ontario. His current research interests include international trade, agricultural economics, and rural development. He is the author of over 30 articles in the journals like the World Economy, Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Journal of World Trade, Brookings Trade Forum, NBER working paper series, and China’s leading journals in agricultural economics.