A Hint of Hypocrisy?

It there a hint of hypocrisy in the demands of underdeveloped countries that the U.S. give up farm subsidies? The Ag Policy Analysis Center’s Daryll E. Ray certainly thinks so, and places the proverbial shoe squarely on the other foot in a recent column. China, for example, one of the countries clamoring for an end to American subsidies, has “doubled its daily kilocalorie production of food between 1970 and 1999 and reduced the number of malnourished among its population by millions.” Is it reasonable to believe that China would abandon these gains by importing up to 20 percent of its seeds and grains and throwing more than 100 million of its citizens out of work -- all this merely to comply with WTO guidelines? Hardly.