China will continue to open up its agricultural machinery market and offer the same treatment to domestic and foreign manufacturers, which will promote fair competition and bring more benefits to farmers, officials said. As of this year, all agricultural machinery is qualified for state subsidies, regardless of country of origin, provided the equipment meets certain criteria, said Zhang Xingwang, director of agricultural machinery at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
In the past 14 years, the central government has spent more than 200 billion yuan ($ 25 billion) in land subsidies to help 33 million farmers buy more than 40 million machines, he said. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the number of large and medium-sized tractors purchased increased six-fold from 2004 to 2017 to 6.7 million. The rate of agricultural mechanization for cereals almost doubled last year to 66% compared to 2004.
Luo Junjie, department head of the equipment industry at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said China’s total of 2,500 major agricultural machinery companies had reached 450 billion yuan last year. In the coming years, the Chinese market for agricultural machinery will be expanded when the rural vitalization strategy is implemented. In a next step, core technologies and key components to promote innovation would be more strongly supported, Luo said. The world’s top ten agricultural machinery manufacturers have factories in China, and Chinese manufacturers should join the global industry chain and improve their competitiveness, Luo said.
