China’s Hunger Games

A supermarket in Beijing, October 2024 Florence Lo / Reuters Caitlin Welsh is Director of the Global Food and Water Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. She served as Director for Global Economic Engagement at the National Security Council, and Acting Director of the U. Department of State’s Office of Global Food Security. Brian Hart is Deputy Director and Fellow of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Share & Download Print unlock this feature or Sign in. Save Sign in and save to read later Copy This is a subscriber-only feature. or Sign in. Chicago MLA APSA APA Chicago Cite not available at the moment MLA Cite not available at the moment APSA Cite not available at the moment APA Cite not available at the moment Request reprint permissions here. Given this dark history, Beijing has long sought to shore up the national food supply, and in recent decades has made enormous gains in its ability to feed its population. Economic reforms launched 1970s ushered in market-oriented policies that ended the food rationing system and provided new incentives to increase agricultural yields. The transition from collective production to a “household responsibility system” brought about rapid marketization and shifting dietary patterns, and China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 flung open the doors of China’s economy to global food and agriculture trade. China also put in place several regulations to promote and protect agricultural production and manage consumption. In 1996, for instance, the government called for a self-sufficiency rate of 95 percent for staple grains, and in 2006 it established a minimum threshold of farmland that must remain in agricultural use. Under Xi, these efforts have intensified. Chinese state media is replete with stories of a young Xi experiencing hunger as one of Mao’s “sent down” youths during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution. Xi’s own mother even turned him in when he escaped his school one night to beg for food. As a young official in the CCP, Xi then traveled to Iowa in 1985 as part of an agricultural delegation from Hebei Province and returned to Iowa as China’s vice president in 2012, famously impressed by advanced U. Soon after rising to power in 2013, Xi emphasized that “feeding the people has always mattered most in national governance” in a speech on China’s food security. As such, he has overseen a continuous effort to achieve food self-reliance.