抄録
China is a ‘big silk country’ accounting for more than 70% of world silk production and more than 80% of the world silk trade. After the second cocoon war, Chinese cocoon production declined during the late 1990s, Since 2000, however, it has recovered with a shift in the major cocoon producing regions, which is propagated as the project ‘the Western Shift of the Eastern Mulberry’. The purpose of this paper is to make clear the actual situation and meanings of the project ‘the Western Shift of the Eastern Mulberry’.
Since 2000, while cocoon production in the traditional cocoon producing regions in the eastern provinces, such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang, has not decreased, it has increased rapidly in the newly industrialized regions, like Guangxi in the western provinces, for example. In the traditional provinces, cocoon production was maintained because sericulture has shifted to the poorer districts within the same province. Rapid growth of cocoon production in Guangxi, on the other hand, depended on high profitability with higher productivity and recent high prices. These facts imply that a demarcation between the cocoon producing and consuming regions has become distinct, rather than a westward shift in sericulture having taken place.
Sustaining sericulture in the eastern provinces and the rapid growth in the western provinces has enabled China to strengthen her status as a ‘big silk country’ and contributed to the improvement of farm income in the poorer rural areas.
