China wants food security
Its legitimacy depends on it
But food is getting harder to farm
Welcome to China Uncensored. I’m Chris Chappell.
China’s obsessed with security. So obsessed in fact that Chinese leader Xi Jinping made the point
of mentioning it over 50 times in the opening ceremony for the 20th Party Congress last year.
That’s more than Rudy Giuliani mentions he was mayor of New York City on 9/11.
Did you know that Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York City on 9/11? Because he was…
mayor of New York City… on 9/11. He’s *really* making sure we “never forget.”
Xi Jinping mentioned how the Chinese Communist Party must guarantee security for the people,
political security, economic security, military,
technological, cultural, social security, and a gazillion other forms of security.
As much as the Communist Party couldn’t care less about the value of human life,
it still cares about letting its people know that
they’ll be secure under its rule. In exchange for their freedom.
Which is kind of like a bear promising a bunch of bees to keep their honey safe.
Not sure how much faith I’d put in that.
One of the most important forms of security the Party cares about is food security.
It knows that entire regimes can fall when people get hungry *and* angry.
The last thing the Chinese Communist Party wants is for people to remember how it
caused disastrous famines under Mao Zedong . That’s why the Central Committee of the CCP and
the State Council publish the “No. 1 Document” each year. It’s always about rural policy.
This year, it called for efforts to stabilize and ensure food production,
agricultural infrastructure, and rural development.
So food security is a big priority. Even the CCP wants to make sure its citizens are fed.
So next time someone laughs at you for saying you’re hangry,
remind them that empires have fallen for less, and to get you a cookie RIGHT NOW.
Food security is enforced in Chinese law as well. In
Article 22 of China’s 2015 National Security Law,
the government requires comprehensive measures to ensure food security, safety, and quality.
Xi Jinping makes the point of mentioning food security over and over, because as he put it,
“Food security is an important foundation for national security.”
And with China’s population developing a taste for more diverse and higher-quality cuisine,
food security is getting harder and harder to guarantee.
It turns out you can’t just order Postmates for 1.4 billion people.
In 2022, many regions in China faced droughts, including the Yangtze River Basin,
which affected more than 8,000 square miles of agricultural land. Given that the basin produces
two-thirds of China’s rice, China definitely lost a lot of grain during the drought.
But China also faced floods in 2022 that wiped out crops.
The Chinese Communist Party’s Zero-Covid policy also messed up agricultural production.
Plus Russia’s invasion of Ukraine absolutely wrecked
food supply chains even after China agreed to import wheat from Russia.
And maybe most disastrous of all,
Pizza Hut no longer accepts competitor coupons. Times are tough for everyone.
Despite all this, China’s National Bureau of Statistics claimed that
the country’s grain output exceeded 686 million metric tons in 2022.
Making it—according to state-run media—the 8th
consecutive year in which Chinese grain production exceeded 650 million tons.
Which I guess is an accomplishment—if you’re following that sort of thing.
And during his 2023 New Year Address, Xi Jinping made the
point of how China “secured bumper harvest for the 19th year in a row,
putting [the CCP] in a stronger position to ensure the food supply of the Chinese people.”
Well, if Xi Jinping said it, then it must be true! I mean, it’s not like there’s a
YouTube channel that’s been calling out his lies for 10 straight years, right?
Buuuut...China’s actual food security might be a lot weaker than the Chinese
Communist Party makes it out to be. I’ll explain after the break.
Welcome back.
Since taking power in 2012, Xi has frequently said that “The rice bowls of the Chinese
people must always be held firmly in our own hand and filled mainly with Chinese grain.”
Xi wants China to be more self-sufficient by producing
more food on its own and depending less on foreign countries, especially the US.
Pfft, their loss. They’ll never know the joy of American, farm-grown
Macaroni and cheese. America’s number one crop.
China claims to be setting records with grain production.
But all evidence indicates that China’s farmland is in serious trouble,
and that grain production isn’t as high as officials claim it to be.
Keep in mind that any official data that comes from China is not reliable—because
even data reporting has to follow politics.
Trusting data from the CCP is like trusting that guy on the dating
site who says he’s six feet tall. Yeah, maybe while standing on a squatty potty.
Multiple studies show that China’s grain production statistics are manipulated.
Subsidies provided by the central government have incentivized lower
level officials to over-report grain production.
Given how often Chinese officials lie to meet government goals, I’m not too surprised.
Especially when you see how corrupt the grain industry
is. Even Chinese authorities take the data they’re given with a grain of salt.
This is similar to what happened during the Great Famine in the 1950s.
Local officials were incentivized to lie about grain production, so higher ups kept getting false
information, and probably no one at the top knew quite how bad it was until people started dying.
I’m not saying people are starving to death now, but I am saying there’s a lot of lying going on.
Regardless of what statistics China puts out,
the reality is that food production is not as high as it should be.
In fact, Chinese farmland productivity is getting worse.
Between 2009 and 2019, China lost nearly 6 percent of its total arable land.
So it isn’t just people that are disappearing in China.
Wait… did the farmlands speak out against the government?
Things will only get worse. Chinese researchers predict that by 2030,
the country will lose over four and a half thousand square miles of high-quality arable land.
“China’s diminishing farmland is also losing productivity due to
over-cultivation and excess use of fertilizers.”
It makes sense they use so much fertilizer. They’re
so full of BS they have to find *some* way to use it.
Even the Chinese regime has to acknowledge that soil erosion is a big problem.
According to an agricultural economics professor at Renmin University , by 2030,
national food output will likely reach less than 59 percent of domestic demand,
down from less than 66 percent in 2020 and 93 percent in 2000.
“China will face greater pressure on resources and
more severe challenges in ensuring grain and food security ahead”.
Okay… but what if in his next speech Xi Jinping says “security” 100 times instead of 50?
That’ll surely help, right?
Making things worse are China’s local governments.
Setting aside land for farming goes against their financial interest.
“Revenue from land sales provides a significant share of local government revenues.”
“Significant” is putting it lightly. “Land sales” usually means selling farmland to
real estate developers. That makes up as much as half of local government income.
And thanks to massive zero-Covid spending, a property crisis, and no bailouts from the
central government, China’s local governments are desperate for new sources of revenue.
So desperate they’re thinking of making an OnlyLands account.
Setting aside land for anything that expands manufacturing, infrastructure,
and urban development is more lucrative to local governments than farming.
This was a problem even before Covid,
which was why the central government set a red line policy to protect arable land.
Now that local governments are bankrupt after Covid,
they have even more reasons to try to get around the red line.
Even if Xi Jinping ensured that land is set aside exclusively for farming, it’ll be hard to fund.
Xi aims to preserve no less than 460,000 square miles of farmland. That’s bigger than California,
Nevada, Oregon, and Washington combined. (map, highlight states)
He especially wants to preserve China’s last remaining black soil.
“Black soil exists in only a few places in the world—in central Eurasia and especially Ukraine,
and in the Red River Valley in the U.S. and Canada—and it’s so potent
that occasionally criminals are busted for black-market trafficking in the stuff.”
Well, if China runs out of black soil, at least they’ll always have their
black skies.
China used to have a lot of black soil as well,
but thanks to Mao’s stupid idea of resorting to deforestation to fix his equally stupid
policies that led to the Great Famine, China’s black soil is now washing away.
So with domestic farming getting harder and harder for China,
what other ways is the country dealing with food security?
Are they ready to swallow their pride and import some
good old American farm-grown mac and cheese? Not quite yet.
They’re trying to reduce food waste
Since people are wasting enough food that would otherwise feed up to 50 million people a year.
But even that’s only a few percent of China’s giant population.
China also continues to import a lot of food from the US, the EU, and now more than ever, Brazil.
In fact, food imports have been increasing over the decades.
They order food to be delivered when they should be making it at home?
Wow… this is the first time in 10 years I can actually relate to them.
This could be a sign that China's food production can’t keep up with the growth in demand.
On the other hand, it could just reflect the price of food determining imports,
since some foods can actually be cheaper for China to import than to grow domestically.
China is even buying up farmland abroad.
A lot of it. Including in the US, England, France, and Australia.
China will need every piece of dirt it can get its hands on.
Otherwise, the bees will stop trusting the bear can keep their honey safe,
and they’ll have a lot of hangry folks to deal with.
And this show is possible because of viewer support. So as a thank you to my wonderful
fans who support China Uncensored through the crowdfunding website Patreon or the
exclusive social media platform Locals, I’ll answer one of your questions:
StatedChimp on Patreon asks: “Do you think that the Chinese overseas police stations
would go as far as detaining non-Chinese civilians from the host countries and
extradite them to China for inadvertently breaking the national security law?”
It wouldn’t quite work that way, because legally speaking,
China can only extradite its own citizens back to China.
China’s overseas police stations are mainly used for overseeing Chinese people.
But I’m sure they’re not above doing a little extra spying on other people,
as well. Like keeping tabs on moderately famous YouTube hosts.
Thanks for your question and your support, StatedChimp.
And thanks to everyone else who supports China Uncensored through Patreon. Join us
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including me answering your questions on the show. Check out Patreon.com/ChinaUncensored.
Once again I’m Chris Chappell. Thanks for watching China Uncensored.