At least seven senior officials in the agriculture sector have been purged since April, when the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) dispatched two inspection groups to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the agricultural banking sector.
The CCDI uniformly attributed their fall to suspected “serious disciplinary violations.”
Two of those officials are at the vice-ministerial level directly supervised by the Organization Department of the Central Committee. One was Tang Renjian, party secretary and minister of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, whom the CCDI announced on May 18 that he was under investigation. The other is Lou Wenlong, a former party committee member and vice president of the Agricultural Bank of China, even though he resigned seven years ago.
Other dismissed include Liu Zhihong, a senior expert at the Agricultural Bank of China; Yuan Haowu, the general manager of Zhonghe Ecological Agriculture; Huo Xi, the financial director of CITIC Agriculture; and two executives of the Agricultural Development Bank of China: Li Guang, the former department manager, and Lu Shuncai, the former director.
Rare Purge
The Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Tang Renjian, is the highest-ranking agricultural official purged in this round. He is a member of the 20th Central Committee and was Xi Jinping’s special envoy to the Pacific island nation of Micronesia to attend the inauguration of the country’s new president last July.
Mr. Tang’s case is rare among other ministers. According to Lai Jianping, a Chinese human rights lawyer living in exile in Canada, the disciplinary watchdog suddenly declared him to have violated party discipline during his tenure.
“This is tantamount to saying that it is a foregone conclusion that Tang will receive a heavy sentence and that there is no room for maneuver,” Mr. Lai told The Epoch Times on May 20.
Those senior officials were all first removed from their posts without being defined a charge; therefore, “the supreme dictator may still let them off the hook,” as opposed to Mr. Tang, who has already been convicted and may face a harsher political destiny.
Food Security Problem
The issue of food security has been plaguing Xi’s administration, evidenced by China’s low self-sufficiency in crops and high dependence on a few countries, a major strategic weakness for the Communist regime.Official party media, People’s Daily, quoted Xi in an article on April 21 that establishing a “big food concept” is necessary to address the food shortage. Xi stressed that food security is a pressing problem that needs to be addressed to reduce dependence on other countries and strengthen self-sufficiency.
A report by the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said that by 2025, China will have a grain deficit of about 130 million tons, of which a cereal deficit will be about 25 million tons.
At the 2022 Financial Market Commission (CMF) conference, Cheng Guoqiang, a professor at the Renmin University of China, revealed that China’s grain self-sufficiency rate dropped from 93.6 percent in 2000 to 65.8 percent in 2020 and was expected to fall further to 59 percent by 2030.
Mr. Cheng also said the self-sufficiency rate of soybeans was still less than 17 percent in 2022.
China is highly dependent on food imports. According to the General Administration of Customs, in 2023, China imported over 161 million tons of grains, an increase of 11.7 percent yearly, and soybean imports were 99.41 million tons, an increase of 11.4 percent yearly.
Moreover, the world’s second economy’s food imports are mainly concentrated in a few countries. Data for the first 11 months of last year showed that China’s soybean imports were primarily from Brazil and the U.S. Australia, Canada, and the U.S. are the top three suppliers for wheat imports. For corn imports, China heavily relies on Brazil, the U.S., and Ukraine.
Extreme weather conditions, inflation, and other economic factors threaten agricultural production and food supply.
In addition, restrictions on Ukrainian food exports following the Russo-Ukrainian war have affected the global supply chain, further exacerbating food shortages in China.
In the face of the multiple pressures on food security, Mr. Lai believes that the CCP has to reorganize its agricultural organs to investigate corrupt officials and hold them accountable, which explains the collective fall of agricultural officials.
Mr. Lai added that the purged officials may have been disloyal to Xi in the governance of “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers,” which has affected the regime’s security and is not tolerated by the Communist Party leadership.
