China’s Food Security Problem Returning

Farmers harvesting rice in a paddy during harvest season in Taizhou, in China's eastern Jiangsu Province, on Sept. 20, 2022. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Commentary

As I discussed in a prior post, “The Hollowing of China,” key macroeconomic factors in China are turning negative in a very transformative way.

A few of those are things like GDP that slowed to a crawl, an accompanying fall in per capita productivity, an aging population that’s a growing burden on the economy, and a younger generation with an unemployment rate that may well be approaching 50 percent.

Additionally, much of the world is looking to move their manufacturing out of China to friendlier business climates, such as in India and Vietnam.

Meanwhile, China’s millionaires are fleeing China for the United States in record numbers.

These are big shifts in the economic landscape that aren’t going away anytime soon.

Food Security Crisis Returns

However, there is one other critical macroeconomic factor China faces, which is stirring up ghosts from the past. With tensions rising between China and its main grain suppliers in the West, the war in Ukraine, and growing supply chain disruptions, China is facing a potential food security crisis to rival those of the past. In 2022, for the first time since 1989, China saw public protests against food scarcity.

Food shortages, hunger, and famine have been a recurring nightmare under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and have been the top source of political and civil instability in the past. CCP leader Xi Jinping is acutely aware of the political dangers that a food shortage can bring and has made food security a top priority of his regime. Between 2000 and 2020, the country’s food self-sufficiency ratio decreased from 93.6 percent to 65.8 percent.

There are several reasons for China’s food insecurity. Most are mainly structurally—or policy-influenced. For example, famines have played a significant and recurring role in China’s fortunes throughout history and even in the modern era. One of the main structural factors for that is simple geography. China must feed about 20 percent of the world’s population with only about 10 percent of the world’s arable land and just 6 percent of the world’s water resources—those are enduring and formidable factors.

Ideological Idiocy and Natural Disasters Play Their Roles

However, there are also policy factors, which could be considered structural, depending on how you wish to look at them, but certainly historical in their long-term impacts. During the Great Leap Forward period from 1958 to 1962, the CCP enforced inefficient farming practices upon successful farmers, which included forced collectivization, the removal or even elimination of “bourgeois” farmers who knew how to get the most from the land, and the overall gross misallocation of land and resources. Food shortages were the result of the Party’s idiotic policies.

Food production was further impacted by floods and droughts in 1960–61, which led to the Great Famine, causing tens of millions of deaths from starvation. This was the worst famine in modern times.

A Return to Private Land Ownership and a Change in Tastes

By the late 1970s, CCP leader Deng Xiaoping began relaxing collective farm mandates. He restored private land ownership and even allowed farmers to sell crop surpluses. Allowing the profit motive back into farming led to greater efficiency, more food production, and farm expansions.

However, those efforts have yet to counter the negative factors in China’s food production challenges.

Today, China relies on external sources to feed its population. One reason is that the middle class prefers a diet heavier in meat, sugar, and refined grains than the traditional vegetable-forward diet. In fact, since 1990, meat consumption has tripled in China. Another is that its farming base is becoming less productive.

Losing Arable Land, Farmers, and Confidence in Domestic Food

China is losing considerable amounts of its arable land to pollution and overuse. In 2021, a study showed that by the end of 2019, China’s total arable land was about 490,000 square miles, down nearly 6 percent from what it was the prior decade, according to official data.

Furthermore, food safety is a major concern among Chinese. Many simply don’t trust domestically produced food due to numerous public toxic food scandals. Chinese consumers overwhelmingly prefer foreign food because they believe foreign products are safer.

What’s more, the younger Chinese, particularly recent graduates, are opting for the more lucrative and exciting urban life and better-paying jobs if they can get them, while Beijing is trying to push them to work in the countryside. Meanwhile, older farmers are retiring. That means a workforce shortage in farming, trucking, and other related industries from both ends of the population. That’s a change that won’t easily reverse by itself and will directly impact farm productivity and distribution.

The World’s Largest Food Importer

For these and other reasons, China is now heavily reliant on foreign food sources. It is the world’s largest corn importer, importing over 28 million metric tons in 2021, a 152 percent rise over 2020, according to official data. China also imported a record $42 billion worth of agricultural products from the United States alone in 2022. 

But in addition to being the world’s largest importer of agricultural products, China is also buying up farmland abroad, including in the United States and countries in South America, Asia, and Africa. The CCP is well aware of the fickle nature of the world and how international events and tensions can directly impact their food security. Initially, the Russia–Ukraine war caused volatility in food prices and supply in China and brought food security into sharper focus for the CCP planners.

False Grain Reports and Corrupt Officials

To add to its problems, provincial officials, and even those at higher levels, are known to be notoriously corrupt. Farmers overreport grain production to avoid punishment. Those false figures then find their way into official planning documents, undercutting policy planning and execution effectiveness. This has been an endemic problem in the graft-based CCP. In recent years, anti-corruption efforts have resulted in the arrest of hundreds of officials in China’s grain reserve system at both local and central levels.

To counter its vulnerability in food security, the country’s National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration has been diligently building its grain reserves, which are now allegedly at record levels. This is indicative of just how serious food security is to China and the CCP. Chinese officials fully understand that their positions of power and privilege ultimately hinge on keeping food in the bellies of the 1.4 billion people over whom they rule.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.