IMPACT OF CLIMATE CHANGE ON CHINA'S RICE PRODUCTION - AN EMPIRICAL ESTIMATION BASED ON PANEL DATA (1979-2011) FROM CHINA'S MAIN RICE-PRODUCING AREAS

Climate change is attracting increasing attention from the international community. To assess the impact of climate change on China's rice production, this paper re-organizes the main rice-producing areas by adding up the annual production of the provincial level regions between 1979 and 2011, utilizes Cobb-Douglas function using daily weather data over the whole growing season. Our analysis of the panel data shows that minimum temperatures (Tmin), maximum temperatures (Tmax), temperature difference (TD) and precipitation (RP) are the four key climate determinants of rice production in China. Among these, temperature difference is surprisingly significant and all except maximum temperatures have positive effects. However, because the actual minimum temperatures and precipitation in China's main rice-producing areas declined while the maximum temperatures and the temperature difference increased during our sample period, climate change has actually provided a negative contribution to the increase in China's rice production.