Hunger drive: How food security is driving China’s tariff policy

What do Chinese anti-food waste laws and tariffs on Australian produce have to do with conflict with Taiwan? Here’s what you need to know.

China’s food imports and exports from 1992-2019.

Can China afford to stir up global conflict if it takes military action against Taiwan?

Or would the resulting political fallout put the country’s food security at risk?

It may appear at first glance a tenuous connection to draw.

But recent political moves against key trading partners, such as Australia, along with the implementation of an anti-food waste law, could be a sign the Chinese government is focused on shoring up food supplies from a diverse pool of exporters.

Data from the China Power Project put the value of China’s food imports in 2017 at about $US104 billion.

But according to Scott Waldron, a University of Queensland senior research fellow and lecturer in agriculture and food sciences, that figure was now closer to $US138 billion.

“The picture is China makes a big effort to be self-sufficient in key grains such as rice, wheat and corn,” Dr Waldron said.

He said on a per capita basis, China’s imports were “pretty small”.

But a secure source of food, via domestic production supplemented with imports, was of paramount importance for the Chinese government, Dr Waldron said.

Since the rise of the Chinese communist party in the late 1940s, food security and the ability to feed a fast-growing population have been of upmost importance to the Chinese government.

Dr Waldron said it was not far-fetched to observe the increasing tensions with Taiwan and China’s recent move to diversify its food supply away from western nations.

“In modern history, China has been in a constant state of civil unrest, wars and crisis,” Dr Waldron said.

“China and especially the party is just obsessed with food security. It has been since its inception, and it is now. China wants to be self-sufficient as much as possible, in case supplies are cut off for any reason, including overseas conflict, trade embargoes from other countries, major drought or disease, or price hikes like the international food price crisis in 2008 … food prices went through the roof and that was a huge wake-up call for China.”

The National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China late last month executed a new anti-food waste law, to “prevent food waste, ensure national food security, promote the traditional virtues of the Chinese nation” and conserve resources.

From as early as 2013, Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping has continuously reminded the party the “rice bowl of the Chinese people must be firmly in their hands at all time … our rice bowl should mainly be filled with Chinese grain”.

“Only when a country is basically self-sufficient in grain can it grasp the initiative in food security and control the overall situation of economic and social development,” Mr Jinping said, speaking in 2013 at a rural work conference.

Trade with China in recent years has proven to be an increasingly volatile exercise.

Allegations of Australian dumping of barley into China resulted in strict tariffs of more than 80 per cent for the next five years.

Next came restrictions on Australian red meat exports.

Then Australia’s wine industry was slapped with anti-dumping duties of between 116 and 218 per cent on bottled still wine, effectively slamming the brakes on the $1.2 billion wine export trade to China for the next five years.

Dr Waldron said China was working to diversify away from western democracies, “such as Canada for oilseeds, Australia for meat, and the US”.

“There are two things going on here. One is to impose costs on Australia to compel Australia to change its foreign policy. But then you have to ask, why are some commodities targeted and not others?” Dr Waldron said.

“If you look closely, products they have targeted are strategic products … they have been too exposed to products from Australia. Barley is the standout case in that regard.”

Dr Waldron said China’s domestic production of barley had fallen to one to two million tonnes, with 60 to 70 per cent of Chinese supply coming from Australia “which contradicts their food security policy”.

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