the welfare state system in China and differences between coastal and interior provinces, the latter being burdened by a larger state sector. Some Western scholars have suggested that reviving the welfare state and instituting a re-distributive income tax system is needed to relieve inequality, while some Chinese economists have suggested that privatizing state monopolies and distributing the proceeds to the population can reduce inequality. Reforms in specific sectors Agriculture During the pre-reform period, Chinese agricultural performance was extremely poor and food shortages were common. After Deng Xiaoping implemented the household responsibility system, agricultural output increased by 8.2% a year, compared with 2.7% in the pre-reform period, despite a decrease in the area of land used. Food prices fell nearly 50%, while agricultural incomes rose. Zhao Ziyang wrote in his memoirs that in the years following the household contracting system, "the energy that was unleashed … was magical, beyond what anyone could have imagined. A problem thought to be unsolvable had worked itself out in just a few years time … [B]y 1984, farmers actually had more grain than they could sell. The state grain storehouses were stacked full from the annual procurement program." A fundamental transformation was the economy's growing adoption of cash crops instead of just growing rice and grain. Vegetable and meat production increased to the point that Chinese agricultural production was adding the equivalent of California's vegetable industry every two years. Growth in the sector slowed after 1984, with agriculture falling from 40% of GDP to 16%; however, increases in agricultural productivity allowed workers to be released for work in industry and services, while simultaneously increasing agricultural production. Trade in agriculture was also liberalized and China became an exporter of food, a great contrast to its previous famines and shortages. Industry In the pre-reform period, industry was largely stagnant and the socialist system presented few incentives for improvements in quality and productivity. With the introduction of the dual-price system and greater autonomy for enterprise managers, productivity increased greatly in the early 1980s. Foreign enterprises and newly formed Township and Village Enterprises, owned by local government and often de facto private firms, competed successfully with state-owned enterprises. By the 1990s, large-scale privatizations reduced the market share of both the Township and Village Enterprises and state-owned enterprises and increased the private sector's market share. The state sector's share of industrial output dropped from 81% in 1980 to 15% in