Agrarian crisis forces China to import food grains from cross the World including arch rival US

Amidst Global backlash over corona virus outbreak, China is now apparently going through a major food crisis. To back this theory Economists say that China has signed back to back deals on food grains and food products with many nations across the World. Data reveals China's food inflation rose by 13.2 percent in July 2020. 

The prices of most of the food items, from cereals to meat products have shot up in China. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, price of pork, the most commonly consumed meat in the Communist country has increased by 86 percent.

China is importing food products from all over the World. The critical condition can be understood from the fact that the country is procuring almost all the major food items. China faces a daunting task to feed 22 per cent of the World population with only 7 per cent of the global arable land. There are 334 million acres of arable land, of which roughly 37 million acres are non-cultivable.

According to China General Administration Customs, the country has also increased its grain imports during the first half of this year by 22.7percent, leading to a food grain import measuring 74.51 million tons. Though China has been the largest producer of soybean for the past few years, yet it plans to import 40 million tons this year from its arch rival the United States.

Import data suggests that China's wheat import went to a seven-year high during June this year. It imported 910,000 tons of wheat during June 2020, which meant an increase of 197 percent on a year-on-year basis. Besides, it also imported 880,000 tons of corn, 680,000 tons of sorghum and 140,000 tons of sugar.

Besides low harvest experts believe that farmers are storing the food items with them and not with the government under apprehension regarding the ongoing food crisis. It is believed that the Chinese government is pressurising the citizens to store their food grains with the government for enabling the country to project that the food crisis is not too severe.

Reports suggest that China’s state grain reserve system could purchase only 45 million tons of wheat in June - July, reflecting a 17.2 percent decline from the past year. 

Besides low production, the intense floods in the Three Gorges and the Yangtze Basin has washed away thousands of acres of fertile lands with standing crops. Floods have impacted the lives of 54.8 million people and have inflicted an economic loss of 20.8 billion US dollars.

The locust swarm attack and the African Swine Flu Fever have also severly affected the country’s agriculture sector. The African Swine Flu Fever has killed a huge amount of pigs in the country, leading to shortage of pork.

On the other hand the cultivable land in China has been declining at a rapid rate. According to China's Ministry of Natural Resources, its cultivable land kept declining for four consecutive years in 2017, measuring 60,900 hectares as compared to the previous year.

In order to meet the deficit between food consumption and food production, China has started to purchase and lease out fertile lands and fields in many African, South American and ASEAN countries including Djibouti, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Chile, Argentina, Cambodia, Laos, etc. China spent around 94 billion US dollars to purchase agricultural lands abroad. The number seems to have increased in the past few years.

Amidst this crisis experts believe that China is also eyeing the fertile areas of its ally Pakistan. Apart from exploiting the natural resources of Balochistan, China now plans to use Sindh as its hub for growing food crops. Though it has already established a certain amount of control over territories like GB, PoJK, Balochistan and given the less fertile terrains of these areas, China cannot utilize them to grow crops. As a result Sindh is a new alternative . Another major advantage of controlling farm grains and growing crops in Sindh is the economical transportation cost of the agriculture products to China .Transportation from African or South American countries is expensive and is time taking.

For  institutional sanction on using Pakistani land by China, the country recently went into an agreement on agriculture cooperation  with Pakistan.China has now got ownership of several thousand acres of Pakistani land for the purpose of ‘demonstration projects’ in the field of agriculture.

The Chinese President seems to be increasingly concerned about the looming food crisis in the country. After running the campaign to stop food wastages, media censorship of food related videos, and urging the Chinese not to waste the food, Xi Jinping is also seeking ideas from experts to handle the crisis. In a recent seminar with top scientists and businessmen, Jinping discussed the possible ways and sought ideas to reduce dependency on foreign countries, especially on food grains. The Chinese President is counting the importance of agriculture in his speeches in past few visits of agriculture dominating Chinese provinces.

Declining consumption over insecurities due to the pandemic has also compelled the citizens to limit their consumption, leading to recession of the economy. The markets are empty and people are not willing to spend. China’s Ministry of Commerce came up with a campaign titled ‘China Consumption Promotion Month’ to encourage Chinese citizens to accelerate consumption, organised between 8th September and 8th October. To further boost consumption, the Chinese government has started to issue coupons since March 2020 to prompt consumers to spend. According to the data of Alipay, local governments of more than 100 cities have issued digital coupons to enhance consumption.

From aggressive imports and foreign land deals to massive campaigns against food wastage and content censorship, China is making every possible effort to tackle the looming crisis. Even if it miserably fails, it plans to cover-up the news from the rest of the world. Several reports in the global media suggest that the world has apparently begun to know about China’s failure to entitle food security to its citizens that it has pledged to its citizens under the ‘six guarantees’ by the Chinese state.

China’s aggressive behavior towards India, Taiwan, Japan and ASEAN countries is only to divert attention of the Chinese public over the economic crisis.

Interestingly, China has been in contradiction to its own data on agriculture, claiming that its economy  is reviving despite the pandemic. However, experts feel that China has been manipulating the economic data for propaganda purpose.It is too early to conclude that Chinese economy is on the recovery phase.