China has been facing a serious crisis, and the whole world was considering it to be an industrial economic crisis, but it is fast turning out to be a much larger crisis. The country is facing fast-depleting food reserves and as a result, Xi Jinping is issuing crazy diktats to provincial governments. It is coupled by the slowing economy and depleting consumption, as well as, weak consumer markets.
In the face of the lingering disruption by the COVID-19 pandemic over the global agricultural trade and what it perceives to be an increasingly hostile world, the Chinese leadership has been increasingly emphasising the importance of grain security since the middle of last year. Chinese President Xi Jinping even kicked off a nationwide campaign to cut food waste. “Beijing must hold provincial Communist Party secretaries and governors personally responsible for adequate grain output,” the country’s new Agricultural Minister said this week, calling this “the most important and necessary step” in ensuring China’s food security.
The country’s fish importers have not been able to buy or even out previous remaining payments. It is not a hidden fact that China’s economic situation is in a deep slump which is still going downwards. The country, from time to time, has tried to artificially inject the market with liquidity to spur demand and had tried very many ways to improve domestic consumption too. But bankrupt importers who are not even able to pay back the dues, forget about making new orders.
Tang Renjian, the newly installed Minister of Agricultural and Rural Affairs, also mapped out a to-do list to improve the country’s crop production this year, including increasing the corn acreage and increasing self-sufficiency in edible soybeans, to keep the annual grain output over 780 billion kg (1.72 trillion pounds).
“We should step up efforts to strictly carry out the most important and necessary inspection work, with both party and administration officials taking responsibility for grain security,” said an official statement posted on the ministry’s website after the meeting.
China is going back to the era of Mao Zedong, when everything was being controlled by the state, and now the state is going to gain control of every activity of the people. Xi Jinping has deteriorated China’s economy to such an extent that it is not even being able to feed its own citizens.
However, the problem has been exacerbated by the fact that the Chinese have been undertaking trade war with the Australians who were a major grain supplier to the Chinese. And now as the country is facing grain shortages because its imports have been weakened and its domestic production has not been able to ramp up to a level that it can substitute export.
As the country is not able to substitute the imports of food materials and it still imported 29.6% more than it did, the last year. And as it has maintained its belligerent attitude, any counter actions by countries from which it is importing grains and food material will lead to a very catastrophic situation. And it is this vulnerability, which is making Xi Jinping issue crazy diktats.