China is one of the top importers of agricultural products, but it has nontariff measures that prevent its imports from growing even larger. Economic theory suggests that a country would import products when foreign prices are lower than domestic prices, decreasing domestic prices and narrowing the “wedge” between domestic and international prices...
Domestic prices in China exceeded foreign prices (using the United States as an example) by large margins for the four commodities we considered, as follows: beef (58 percent), corn (64 percent), pork (213 percent), and wheat (42 percent).