Areas of Sino-Indian Cooperation in Agriculture: Problems and Prospects

IV
94 percent of China's people live in the eastern 48 percent of China encompassing 86 percent of the cultivated land. Much of the rest of China is desert, grassland, mountains, and high plateau much less suitable for cultivation. The amount of cultivated land in the northwest is constrained by low rainfall and lack of irrigation; the area lags far behind the rest of China in economic development. In recent years, the government has expanded irrigated areas in the hexi corridor along the silk road in gansu province. The ministry of water resources has also engaged in planning for a large-scale irrigation project north of Urumqi in Xinjiang.
There is thus little to deliberate on scarcity of land resources for farm use in China. There is year on year loss of cultivable land. The problem is acute beyond proportion in the provinces of Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong in South China.
It is not just a problem of Quantity. Aggording to a study of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the first class land of agricultural use in China does not exceed 40 million hectarters of land.