Bioethanol development in China and the potential impacts on its agricultural economy

Abstract

China is now the third largest bioethanol producer in the world after the United State and Brazil. The overall goals of this paper are to provide an overview of China's current bioethanol program, its future trend, and the likely impacts on its agricultural economy in the future. The analysis shows that China has developed an ambitious long-run biofuel program with a series of financial and institutional supports. While there are several potential feedstock crops available for bioethanol production, lack of land for feedstock production is one of major constraints in China's bioethanol expansion. The results show that although China's bioethanol expansion will have little impacts on overall agricultural prices in international markets, it will have significant impacts on the prices, productions, and trade of those energy crops being used for bioethanol production in China. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.