OpinionChina’s food security is again on Beijing’s agenda, with the nation’s bitter history of hunger and famine in mind

After a quarter century, the issue of ensuring China’s grain supply has returned to prominence

China’s reliance on imports to ultimately feed its increasingly affluent citizens is much higher than the headline figures suggest

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A worker loads packaged grains at a rice-processing company in northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 7:15am, 12 Jan 2021Updated: 7:15am, 12 Jan 2021

It was in 1995 that Beijing first tasked every provincial governor with the difficult job of ensuring sufficient grain plantations and output in their provinces – an accountability system known as “provincial governors looking after the rice bag”.

The Chinese government, under then-premier Li Peng, imposed the task upon provincial governors because Beijing saw great dangers posed by a grain-supply shortage amid runaway food-price inflation. China’s official consumer price index shot up 21.7 per cent in 1994 mainly due to rising food prices, exceeding Beijing’s target of 10 per cent and stirring horrible memories of hyperinflation in the late 1980s that led to widespread unhappiness with the government and eventually a pro-democracy movement in 1989.

The system, under which a provincial governor must assume responsibility for the local grain output, has largely worked. It has helped China maintain a steady rise in grain output – China’s official figures claimed that the country set a grain-output record for 17 consecutive years, through 2020.

After a quarter century, however, the issue of grain-supply security has again returned to prominence on Beijing’s agenda. Provincial Communist Party chiefs, who have traditionally stayed aloof of specific economic works, will be held accountable for grain output along with provincial governors, from this year on.

Like in 1995, Beijing’s re-emphasis on grain-supply security has its basis.