Urbanisation of rural areas can help secure China food security
- President Xi Jinping says farm-industry technology may consolidate the country’s emergence as a world agricultural power and narrow the urban-rural gap
Despite recent bumper harvests, food security remains an abiding concern for China’s leadership. Evidence of that is to be found in the first State Council policy document for the year.
As always with the No 1 document, it outlines policies and priorities for the rural sector. What sets it apart this year is that President Xi Jinping has emphasised that the rural economy and farm-industry technology lie at the forefront of China’s great modernisation, aimed at consolidating its emergence as a world agricultural power.
Whereas the focus over the past decade has been on urbanisation and elimination of extreme poverty, it is shifting to “urbanisation” of rural areas. That means narrowing technological and income gaps.
Agricultural modernisation goes beyond the need for balanced national development. It focuses on food security amid geopolitical uncertainties, such as the Ukraine war and disruption of commodity supply chains, and tension with the United States.
As a result, the “No 1 central document” pledges a “full effort” to ensure agricultural supplies, create rural jobs and deepen import diversification.
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River crabs enrich rice fields in northeast China
“The most arduous task [in building] a modern socialist country lies in rural areas,” the document says. “Unpredictable factors are increasing. It is vital to maintain the fundamentals of agriculture, rural areas and farmers. We cannot afford to fail.”
Thanks to a growing world population and climate change, global awareness of food security is increasing. For some poor nations it is already an existential threat of starvation and malnutrition.
The science of improving crop yields and nutritional quality has already staved off a wider crisis. But it is becoming more difficult to raise output, to the point where reducing waste counts.
China, as the biggest stakeholder in improving grain yields, is an example of that, with a 1 per cent rise in this year’s grain harvest representing a major effort by governments and farmers.
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The strongly worded document is the latest show of resolve by Beijing to aim for self-sufficiency in the face of concerns that geopolitical uncertainty may put it under pressure in key areas.
Rural work has been at the heart of the central government’s annual work documents for the past 20 years. The latest one, however, sharpens the perspective in a fast-changing world.
China says absolute poverty has been largely eradicated. Official data shows that the urban-rural gap has narrowed, although 273 million are estimated to remain below the World Bank’s 2022 poverty line for upper-middle income economies.
Rural modernisation and technology, coupled with the transition of rural labour from poor western provinces to coastal factories, will close the divide further.
