Explainer | China food security: how’s it going and why’s it important?
- China needs to feed 1.4 billion people, but recently African swine fever, the coronavirus and natural disasters have raised questions about its food security
- Imports play a key role in China’s food supply chain, including its commitments under the phase one trade deal with the United States
Why is China’s food security important?
China needs to feed its 1.4 billion people, around one fifth of the world’s population.
The memory of China’s Great Famine that swept the country from 1958-62 is still rooted in the hearts of older generations. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, a radical agricultural campaign, was supposed to lead China into a communist utopia through rapid industrialisation and collectivisation, but it led to the death of tens of millions of people.
And in a turbulent post-coronavirus world, ensuring food security has become an increasingly more crucial political priority for Beijing’s new development strategy, which relies more on the domestic market and its consumers to resist external uncertainties.
A little more food is an economic issue in China, but a little less may turn into a political problem
President Xi Jinping has said that the rice bowl of China must be firmly kept in Chinese hands, meaning China must ensure absolute safety in the supply of grains.
“A little more food is an economic issue in China, but a little less may turn into a political problem,” said GLOCON Agritech Co-Innovation Institute agriculture analyst Zhang Xin.
What impacts China’s food security?
China possesses around 10 per cent of the world’s total arable land, but in terms of per capita the acreage available for crops was less than half of the global average as of 2006, according to the World Bank. Some of the limited high-quality and reserve land suitable for farming has also been used for industrial and real-estate purposes.
