Food crisis or war preparations? President Xi is "stepping up" the stockpiling of essentials -- #China Boss #update 1.14.22
Update
What happened this week.
Lingling Wei at the Wall Street Journal wrote a stellar piece on President Xi Jinping's “accelerat[ed] efforts” to "fortify the Chinese economy against a prolonged period of tension with the U.S. and other countries” by “stockpiling” essentials and increasing domestic production.
Wei, WSJ:
China’s economic agencies, including the top planning authority, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the ministry overseeing agriculture, recently have singled out “security” as a priority for 2022, according to official releases. In particular, authorities are pledging to secure the supplies of everything from grains to energy and raw materials, as well as the processes involved in production and distribution of industrial parts and commodities.
Having ramped up grain purchases in recent months, China has also detailed plans to set aside arable land to grow soybeans, a crop it had all but abandoned after its 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization.
Wei correctly pointed out that China's "security-oriented economic agenda marks a step-up” in the strategy Xi began after the 2020 Wuhan outbreak “to give priority to domestic suppliers and consumers as the driver of China’s economy over foreign investment and exports” - the so-called “dual circulation” policy.
Why it matters.
Tensions with China are at an all-time high. It would be prudent not to jump to conclusions that President Xi is preparing for a Western blockade doled out as punishment for attacking Taiwan. But it would also be prudent to face that possibility as a realistic risk, head on.
Food security.
Food security issues have plagued Chinese leaders for millennia, but modern policymakers have a special history of governance failures that, according to Scott B. MacDonald, “suggests … the CCP should be concerned."
MacDonald, The Diplomat:
Food, large populations and good governance are built into China’s history. Indeed, the national story has often been defined by a dynastic cycle in which the old order becomes corrupt, fails to maintain key infrastructure like canals and irrigation, and eventually is unable to keep public order or defend the frontier. The economy eventually fails as does support for the dynasty. Famine, bandits and rebels add to the misery, eroding the old dynasty’s Mandate of Heaven. Out of the chaos a new leader arises, sets the wrongs right and founds the next dynasty. So the cycle goes.
The Communists are no strangers to famine. Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward (1959-1960) set out to rapidly industrialize China, but instead helped plunge the country into ideological upheaval, which contributed to the disruption of agricultural production. Mao’s ideological blinders and the fear most Party members felt about telling him the truth of a massive miss in food production targets plunged his country into what is known as the Great Chinese Famine (1959-1961), which is thought to have killed millions (possibly up to 55 million people).
But MacDonald’s mention of the Wuhan Covid breakdown that occurred under Xi’s leadership to illustrate the potential for Party’s governance failures to repeat themselves today is noteworthy:
It was only after Mao was briefly ousted that China would return to being able to feed itself, helped by allowing some degree of market-like incentives to encourage food production. Does China face a similar ideological situation now?
Probably not, but Xi does not like dissenting views. This has created a top-down system that makes it difficult for actors at the bottom of the power pyramid to quickly signal problems up the chain of command. The outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan had all the hallmarks of this: Local leaders sought to contain a problem that was beyond their capacity and in doing so suppressed information, crushed any debate over policy options and delayed the moment when key news should have heading up the hierarchy to the emperor, or, in this case, the president.
Emphasis added.
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