Saving energy, grain crucial for China

According to a recent report released by the Institute of Rural Development, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China may be short of 130 million tons of grains, including 25 million tons of cereals, by the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan Period (2021-25).

Food shortage has already affected our national food security. The overemphasis of the grain crisis can help encourage Chinese people to save food, but this is not a fact. It is a miracle that China feeds 20 percent of the world’s population with just about 7 percent of the world’s total arable land. Statistics show that China’s grain self-sufficiency is over 80 percent, and that for rice, wheat and corn was 98.75 percent in 2019. Regarding food, China imports mostly soybean and animal feed.

Over the past few decades, there has been a change in Chinese people’s dietary habits, with the consumption of meat, eggs and milk increasing constantly, requiring the raising of more pigs, cattle, chickens, fish and other animals. Therefore, the country began importing large quantities of soybean as animal feed, gradually forming a grain consumption pattern in which part of China’s animal protein and edible oil needs are met by imports, including soybean.

China’s long-time trade surplus achieved during the period of its rapid economic growth and its stable exchange rate have supported the continuous improvement and upgrading of its residents’ diet structure. However, as the appeal and trend of global economic rebalancing becomes stronger, especially as China plans to focus its economic development on the domestic economic circulation, the country’s trade surplus may gradually decline and its huge import capacity in energy and food may also face growing challenges in the future. Therefore, China must first save food, rather than waste them. Japan and the Republic of Korea, with their large populations and limited resources, have developed a habit of being frugal with regard to residents’ diet.

Saving energy and food should become a strategic task for a country with a large population such as China, which lacks the resources to afford a lavish lifestyle for its people; therefore “diligence and frugality” should be like a persistent living philosophy for the Chinese nation.

As regards its economic structural transformation, China’s economic system must hinge on domestic drivers. Since China’s oil, soybean, micro chip industries depend on imports to a certain extent, the country must do what it can do to save energy and grain and try to improve domestic chip manufacturing. This should become a long-term constraint on people through systematic adjustment and regulation on the demand side.