Has China Become A Dual-Sector Economy? An Empirical Analysis on Whether China Has Reached the Lewis Turning Point *

Yao Wanjun
School of Economics, Nankai University, Tianjin, China

 
Abstract: Both the labor shortage that began in 2000 and the wave of migrant workers returning to the countryside in 2009 sparked intense debates among scholars about whether China had reached the Lewis turning point. Based on agricultural economics and the dual-sector model, the author conducted an empirical analysis and arrived at the following five conclusions. First, the dual economy is structured differently among agricultural industrial sectors and regions. Second, surplus labor still exists in the backyard stockbreeding sector (hogs, beef cattle, sheep, and dairy cattle), implying that it has still not passed the first turning point. Third, the sector of production of staple food grains and minor cereals has passed the shortage point, but is still far from the commercialization point. Fourth, cash crop production has passed out of the subsistence sector into the capitalist sector. Fifth, regional differences are stark: the majority of China’s eastern region is either approaching or has surpassed the commercialization point, whereas the central and western regions have not.
Key words: dual economy, dualistic structure coefficient, unbalanced regionaldevelopment, agricultural sector

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