Footnoting Xi's speech on food security

In a move that will likely please foreign China watchers, Xinhua News will be releasing word-for-word English translations of Xi Jinping’s speeches and activities during the Two Sessions.

This newsletter has also benefitted from the effort, so your host can devote more time to present contexts that can help you unpack Xi’s speeches.

For today, your host will focus on his second speech, which addresses the issue of food security. Xi has not made it a secret that food security is on the top of his mind. How does he think China should achieve full food security? This newsletter explains.

***

习近平指出，粮食安全是“国之大者”。悠悠万事，吃饭为大。民以食为天。经过艰苦努力，我国以占世界9%的耕地、6%的淡水资源，养育了世界近1/5的人口，从当年4亿人吃不饱到今天14亿多人吃得好，有力回答了“谁来养活中国”的问题。

Food security is among a country's most fundamental interests, Xi said. Of all things, eating matters most, and food is the most basic necessity of the people①. Through enormous efforts, China is capable of feeding one-fifth of the global population with nine percent of the world's arable land and six percent of the freshwater resources. Seven decades ago, the country had an underfed population of 400 million, but today its 1.4 billion people are eating well with a great range of choices. This is a powerful answer to the question "Who will feed China?"

① There are few issues that can tap into the collective psyche of the Chinese society as food security (粮食安全). The anxiety can be hard to understand for some China watchers, because after all, China seems to be feeding its population well, what’s the big deal? This Study Times commentary this article lists several reasons.

1. Starvation is still very much fresh in the memories of Chinese society. According to statistics, by as late as 2000, there are still 30 million people in rural China who still suffered from a shortage of food, meaning a great portion of the Chinese population has some memories of hunger.

   One anecdote during this event that got reported by another Xinhua story is telling: Xi reportedly told the meeting

   “中国人才几天时间没饿肚子？也就是上世纪八十年代后出生的这些孩子。过去谁没饿过肚子？但人很容易健忘。”

   How many days has it been that China has left hunger behind? Probably just the kids that were born during and after the 1980s. Who hasn’t gone hungry before? But some people can easily forget.

2. Globally speaking, UN reports say more people in more than 40 countries still suffer from food shortages, while some main food exporters “are taking advantage of their position and weaponizing food exports to intervene with the economic growth and social stability of other countries“. Taking the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change into consideration, “a future global food crisis is not impossible”.

3. Domestically speaking, while hunger has been all but eliminated from China, the Chinese are demanding higher quality food, especially protein intake. This puts increasing strain on the supply of animal feed that China is still unable to produce enough for itself.

4. Urbanization is luring an increasing number of the rural population away from farming to the city. Villages, where only the elderly and children remain behind, are common.

5. There’s still considerable food waste going on. A 2015 study found that during consumption China wastes 50 billion kilos of food annually, enough to feed 350 million people. Another set of statistics shows annual food waste during storage, transportation, and processing mounts to 35 billion kilos.

Due to the above-mentioned factors, it’s well-warranted for the government leadership to be concerned over food security, which is closely tied to overall social stability.

一成绩来之不易，要继续巩固拓展。在粮食安全这个问题上不能有丝毫麻痹大意，不能认为进入工业化，吃饭问题就可有可无，也不要指望依靠国际市场来解决。要未雨绸缪，始终绷紧粮食安全这根弦，始终坚持以我为主、立足国内、确保产能、适度进口、科技支撑。

Stressing that the hard-won results should be consolidated and expanded, Xi urged against slacking off on the food security issue. Despite China's industrialization, food supply should never be considered an insignificant issue, and we cannot rely solely on the international market to solve it②. China should be well-prepared, remain vigilant on food security, and adhere to the principle of self-sufficiency based on domestic grain production, guaranteed production capacity, moderate food imports, and technological support③.

② There’s a responsive tone in this sentencing, hinting that deprioritizing food security or allowing importation to make up a bigger chunk of China’s food supply may have been raised in debates.

According to this Xinhua report,

去年，习近平总书记专门向部分地方负责同志严肃提出，把“米袋子”、“菜篮子”的责任完全推给市场不行，不能搞无粮化。

Last year, Xi specifically raised the point to top provincial officials in a serious manner, that it was not ok to allow the market to assume full responsibility for supplying grain and vegetables, and that it was not ok to carry out de-grainization.

③This principle, the main points of the National Food Security Strategy (国家粮食安全战略), was inked during the Central Economic Work Conference in Dec. 2013, a year after the 18th party congress.

Li Guoxiang, a fellow at CASS, said compared with previous versions of the strategy, guaranteed production capacity was newly added.

Han Changfu, then Minister of Agriculture, quantified the strategy in Dec. 2013 as

确保水稻、小麦、玉米三大主粮自给率保持在９５％以上，其中水稻、小麦两大口粮保持１００％自给。

Ensuring that the self-sufficiency rate of the three major grains of rice, wheat and corn stay above 95%, and the full self-sufficiency rate of the two major for-food grains of rice and wheat.

习近平强调，要全面落实粮食安全党政同责，严格粮食安全责任制考核，主产区、主销区、产销平衡区要饭碗一起端、责任一起扛。要优化布局，稳口粮、稳玉米、扩大豆、扩油料，保证粮食年产量保持在1.3万亿斤以上，确保中国人的饭碗主要装中国粮。要保护农民种粮积极性，发展适度规模经营，让农民能获利、多得利。制止餐饮浪费是一项长期任务，要坚持不懈抓下去，推动建设节约型社会。

Xi stressed that the mechanism under which responsibilities for food security are assigned equally to both Party committees and governments should be fully enforced, that the assessment of responsibility system for food security should be strict, and that major agricultural production and sales areas as well as areas where agricultural production and sales are balanced should work together to ensure food supply and take responsibilities④. The overall arrangement should be optimized by stabilizing the production of grain and corn while expanding the planting of soybean and oilseed crops, so as to ensure that the annual grain output remains above 650 million metric tons and that domestic grains play the main role in ensuring the food supply for the Chinese people. The farmers' enthusiasm to grow crops should be protected, and appropriately scaled agricultural operations should be developed so that farmers will be able to gain increasing benefits. Stopping food waste in the catering industry is a long-term task, and we must make persistent efforts and work to build a resource-conserving society⑤.

④Chinese provincial-level entities are divided into three categories depending on their grain production and consumption. One paper defines Major Producing Regions (主产区)， as provinces that run an annual grain surplus of more than 1 million tons, Major Consumption Regions （主销区）as provinces that run an annual grain deficit of more than 1 million tons, while the rest are Production-Consumption Balanced Regions（产销平衡区）

Per this 2007 classification, China’s MPR includes Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui, Sichuan, while MCR includes Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Fujian, and Hainan. But obviously, the status of each province is subject to change in accordance with its production and consumption number. See the abovementioned paper for more data.

On Xi’s emphasis that all provinces need to shoulder responsibilities to ensure food security, Chen Shangying, a colleague with expertise in agriculture affairs, tells your host that each province, regardless of their status, may have room for improvement on this front.

MPRs may slack off on grain production as they are comfortably positioned to supply their own demand, while MCRs may slack off protecting farmland thinking they have MPRs to fall back on, Chen says.

⑤As stated above, food waste is considered a major risk for food security in China. In early 2013, not long after he came into office, Xi launched a clean plate initiative （光盘行动）, directing that “the widespread phenomenon of wasting must come to a hard stop.” (浪费之风务必狠刹！)

9 years on, with the help of repeated pushes from the top, the initiative has delivered some results, though some reports indicate that wastefulness is not all that easy to eradicate.

Xi himself acknowledges that there’s still much to be done in curbing waste.

在总书记看来，我们节约粮食这方面做得还不够，特别是社会上还有一些不良风气，大吃大喝、讲排场、摆阔气、要面子，造成浪费。

In the eyes of Xi, we are still not doing enough in saving food. Especially there are bad habits in the society, such as drink and eat in excess, look for ostentation, show off and looking for face, causing waste in the process.

习近平指出，耕地是粮食生产的命根子，是中华民族永续发展的根基。农田就是农田，只能用来发展种植业特别是粮食生产，要落实最严格的耕地保护制度，加强用途管制，规范占补平衡，强化土地流转用途监管，推进撂荒地利用，坚决遏制耕地“非农化”、基本农田“非粮化”。农田必须是良田，要建设国家粮食安全产业带，加强农田水利建设，实施黑土地保护工程，分类改造盐碱地，努力建成10亿亩高标准农田。要采取“长牙齿”的硬措施，全面压实各级地方党委和政府耕地保护责任，中央要和各地签订耕地保护“军令状”，严格考核、终身追责，确保18亿亩耕地实至名归。

Xi pointed out that farmland is the lifeline of grain production and the foundation of the sustainable development of the Chinese nation. Farmland is for farming and can only be used to grow crops, especially grain crops. The strictest possible system for the protection of farmland must be implemented, the regulation over the use of farmland should be strengthened, cultivated land used for other purposes should be offset in a regulated way, how transferred land rights are used should be placed under strict supervision, idle land should be put into better use, and any attempt to use the farmland for purposes other than agriculture and specifically grain production should be resolutely stopped⑥. All of the farmland must remain fertile. Agricultural belts for national food security will be established, farmland irrigation and water conservancy will be further improved, projects conserving chernozem soil will be implemented, and saline-alkali land will be transformed on a categorized basis, so as to develop about 66.7 million hectares of high-quality farmland. Measures to protect farmland must have teeth. Local party committees and governments at all levels should be held strictly accountable for farmland protection. The central authorities will make all the local authorities pledge themselves to protect farmland, assessment on officials must be strict, and anyone who ever breaks farmland protection rules will be held accountable throughout their lifetime, so as to ensure that China's total of 120 million hectares of farmland is a reliable figure.

⑥Another Xinhua story on the same event was more specific on the problems China’s farmland is facing.

谈到耕地保护问题，习近平总书记历数了当前几类突出问题：挖湖造景，挖鱼塘、建养殖场、种花卉果木，占用耕地乱象屡禁不止；在耕地占补平衡上弄虚作假，搞“狸猫换太子”；放任乱占耕地建房，“崽卖爷田心不疼”……

When addressing farmland protection, Xi enumerated several types of pressing problems: actions appropriating farmland, including digging lakes to create artificial scenery, digging out fishing ponds, building animal farms, and planting flowers and fruit trees; Falsify farmland balance sheets; Conniving building projects on farmland.

习近平强调，解决吃饭问题，根本出路在科技。种源安全关系到国家安全，必须下决心把我国种业搞上去，实现种业科技自立自强、种源自主可控。要发挥我国制度优势，科学调配优势资源，推进种业领域国家重大创新平台建设，加强基础性前沿性研究，加强种质资源收集、保护和开发利用，加快生物育种产业化步伐。要深化农业科技体制改革，强化企业创新主体地位，健全品种审定和知识产权保护制度，以创新链建设为抓手推动我国种业高质量发展。

Xi stressed that science and technology are key to food security. The security of germplasm resources is related to national security, meaning we must be determined to develop our country's seed industry so as to increase self-reliance in seed technology and ensure that the country's seed resources are self-supporting and under better control. We should take advantage of our institutional strengths, allocate advantageous resources in a down-to-earth manner, promote the establishment of a major innovation platform at the national level for the seed industry, accelerate basic and frontline research, strengthen the collection, protection, development, and use of seed resources, and speed up the industrialization of bio-breeding. The reform of the agricultural scientific mechanism should be furthered, the principal role of enterprises in innovation should be strengthened, and the systems for identifying seed varieties and protecting intellectual property rights should be upgraded to promote the high-quality development of our country's seed industry based on innovation chains.

Seed self-reliance has long been emphasized by numerous top-level speeches or policies and thus has too much to unpack that would need a separate newsletter.

For this newsletter, your host would just highlight a recent revision of 4 regulations concerning the seed industry and GMOs by the Ministry of Agriculture, seen by market watchers as a great boon for the industries.

随着本次规章修订，转基因商用化落地已经逐步成为现实，生物育种大门已经逐步打开。

With the revision of the regulations, the commercialization of genetic modification has gradually become a reality, the door to bio-breeding has gradually opened.

On a side note, the MOA opened the revision for comments on Nov. 12, passed the revision on Dec. 31, and implemented it on Jan.21.

Also, the NPC Standing Committee revised China’s seed law in December 2021.

习近平指出，要树立大食物观，从更好满足人民美好生活需要出发，掌握人民群众食物结构变化趋势，在确保粮食供给的同时，保障肉类、蔬菜、水果、水产品等各类食物有效供给，缺了哪样也不行。

Xi pointed out, we should adopt a "Greater Food" approach⑦, and, with the aim of better satisfying the people's needs for a better life, grasp the changes in people's food structure. While ensuring grain supply, we must also guarantee an effective supply of various foods including meat, vegetables, fruits, and aquatic products. None of them should be lacking.

⑦Despite a peer newsletter stating the phrase “is new", the "Greater Food" approach actually first appeared in publically released official papers in 2015, during a Central Rural Work Conference.

The phrase reappeared in an official policy regarding promoting agriculture modernization ( 中共中央 国务院关于落实发展新理念加快农业现代化 实现全面小康目标的若干意见) in late 2015.

树立大食物观，面向整个国土资源，全方位、多途径开发食物资源，满足日益多元化的食物消费需求。

Establish a Greater Food approach, employ multiple means to develop food resources in all respects, drawing from entirety of national resources, to meet the increasingly diversified food consumption needs.

要在保护好生态环境的前提下，从耕地资源向整个国土资源拓展，宜粮则粮、宜经则经、宜牧则牧、宜渔则渔、宜林则林，形成同市场需求相适应、同资源环境承载力相匹配的现代农业生产结构和区域布局。要向森林要食物，向江河湖海要食物，向设施农业要食物，同时要从传统农作物和畜禽资源向更丰富的生物资源拓展，发展生物科技、生物产业，向植物动物微生物要热量、要蛋白。

While protecting the ecology and environment, we should shift our focus from farmland only to the whole country's land resources to develop, in line with their specific conditions, grain production, agribusiness, animal husbandry, fishing, or forestry. As a result, we could put in place the production structure and regional layout for modern agriculture that are commensurate with market demands and the bearing capacities of resources and the environment. We can harvest food from forests, rivers, lakes, and seas, and from protected agriculture. Apart from traditional crops and livestock and poultry resources, we should exploit biological resources. By developing biological science and technology and bio-industries, we can obtain calories and protein from plants, animals, and microorganisms.

This paragraph seems to be an expansion of the Greater Food approach, specifying potential food sources that can be further tapped into.

Interestingly, one of the earliest mentions of the Greater Food approach your host was able to dig up was by a former agriculture expert in 2007 and there’s some resemblance between his words then and Xi’s words yesterday.

中国农业专家咨询团主任委员、中国草学会名誉理事长洪绂曾说，作为世界上人口最多的国家，解决全民温饱问题任务艰巨，有必要树立大食物观。

他说，要统筹考虑碳水化合物、油脂和蛋白质等主要营养素的生产和供给；既要向耕地要“粮”，也要向林、草、水要“粮”；既要考虑眼前食物生产，也要考虑其可持续性。

Hong Fuzeng, Vice Minister of Agriculture from 1989 to 1997, said that as the world's most populous country, the task of solving the problem of food and clothing for all is daunting, and it is necessary to establish a Greater Food approach.

He said, we should consider the production and supply of major nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats and proteins in entirety; we should ask for "food" not only from arable land, but also from forest, grass and water; we should consider both immediate food production and its sustainability.

要积极推进农业供给侧结构性改革，全方位、多途径开发食物资源，开发丰富多样的食物品种，实现各类食物供求平衡，更好满足人民群众日益多元化的食物消费需求。

We should proactively advance the supply-side structural reform in agriculture, employ multiple means to develop food resources in all respects, and produce a rich variety of food items so that we can achieve food supply-and-demand balance and better meet the increasingly diverse food consumption needs of the people.

The language is very similar to the aforementioned official policy regarding promoting agriculture modernization.

This newsletter is written by Yang Liu, founder of Beijing Channel.

Please write to yangliuxh@gmail.com if you have any feedback or suggestions of any particular topic to be featured in future Beijing Channel newsletters.

Disclaimer: translation in this newsletter, other than parts released by Xinhua, is done by deepl.com, with editing by your host. It should only serve as a reference, NOT as an official translation of the original text.