Abstract: There is an urgent need to boost the competitiveness of agriculture as well as to develop the massive smallholder farmers in China. First, this article redefines the agricultural competitiveness into three dimensions based on China's institutional and agricultural conditions, that is, to improve the production competitiveness is the basic requirement, to maintain the safety competitiveness is the strategic bottom line and to increase the market competitiveness is the key. Then, this article analyzes the internal mechanism of how smallholder farmers could improve agricultural competitiveness from these three dimensions. We conclude that we must not ignore the smallholder farmers in China and the key to improve the agricultural competitiveness is to develop smallholder farmers. However, the development of small farmers is limited by internal and external conditions currently. This suggests the following targeted policies:strengthen government support; enhance the self-development ability of smallholder farmers; promote the innovation and application of agricultural technology and material equipment and integrate smallholder farmers into the value chain.

Key words: agricultural competitiveness, smallholder farmers, production competitiveness, safety competitiveness, market competitiveness