Food security key to China's Doha line
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - China's tough stance at the recent Doha Round trade talks in Geneva
had less to do with political posturing than with the country's long-standing
obsession with food security, experts here suggest.
Jettisoning a long period of silence at the World Trade Organization Doha Round
talks, which collapsed at the end of July after seven years of negotiations,
China joined hands with developing nations and let disagreement over
agricultural tariffs derail the dialogue.
"Recent food riots in several countries have made Chinese leaders
realize even more than before that food security must be resolved internally,"
Meng Zhou, a Beijing-based independent researcher suggested in a column in the
Xinjingbao newspaper. "If food supply is dependent on imports then you can
never guarantee social stability and even national sovereignty can be
jeopardized. It serves to explain the much harder line taken by China at the
trade negotiations this time."
Chen Taifeng, China studies scholar at Qinghua University, concurred.
"Skyrocketing food prices have made developing countries very nervous," he
said. "Before it opens its agricultural markets entirely, China needs
guarantees that it can rely on safeguard mechanisms to protect its own farm
produce."
The Geneva talks broke down in late July after member countries could not agree
on a proposal to allow developing nations to use special safeguard tariffs to
shield their farmers from floods of cheap imports.
With its huge exports, China has benefited generously from liberalized trade,
which has delivered markets for its cheap manufactured goods. At previous talks
of the so-called Doha development round Beijing had chosen to remain a
low-profile participant if not a silent observer of the bargaining between rich
nations and the developing world.
But in a sign of deep anxiety over food security, this time around China shared
India's opposition to a Doha deal that New Delhi had argued would hurt its
millions of poor farmers. The move comes amid mounting challenges for Beijing
to feed its 1.3 billion people against shrinking arable land and water
shortage.
Wealthy nations led by the United States have blamed India and China for not
ceding enough ground at the trade liberalization talks and thus blocking
solutions to recent food shortages and a continuing spiral of soaring food
prices. The US trade representative, Susan Schwab, said it was "unconscionable"
that developing countries were clinging to such protectionist attitudes.
"In the face of the food price crisis, it is ironic that the debate came down
to how much and how fast nations could raise their barriers to imports of
food," she was quoted as saying.
But China has pointed a finger at developed countries for killing the talks,
saying it is unfairly maligned by the West. Commerce minister Chen Deming told
the official newspaper of the communist party, the People's Daily, at the
weekend that China should not be blamed for the failure of the WTO talks.
"We are a new member of the WTO, and must still enjoy treatment as a new
member," he said. "The collapse of the talks has nothing to do with China".
Chen, who represented China at the Geneva talks, described the failure of the
negotiations as a "heavy blow". In his initial statements after the foundering
of the talks, Chen had blamed the US saying that "after satisfying its own
demands the US had demanded from the developing world a price as high as
heaven".
The US had objected to the details of a "special safeguard mechanism", designed
to protect farmers in the developing world against temporary surges in
cut-price imports of cotton, rice and sugar.
China has long insisted on protecting the livelihoods of its subsistence
farmers. The country has between 750 million and 800 million farmers - nearly
double the entire population of the European Union. The majority survive on the
equivalent of about US$2 a day.
"It is unfair to pitch wealthy farmowners of the West, regularly subsidized by
their countries' finance ministries, against the millions of unprotected
small-size farmers of China," argued Meng Zhou. "Farmers and agriculture are
still the pillars of many developing countries' economies. In the West though,
peasants represent only a fraction of the population and agriculture accounts
for only a small portion of the rich nations' GDPs".
Editorials in some Chinese newspapers have accused the US of "hypocritical
compromises" negotiated at the Doha round tables. The US agreed to cap its
trade-distorting farm subsidies at $14.5 billion but an editorial in the 21st
Century Business Herald said the compromise was "meaningless".
"As the world's most efficient grain producer, whose exports account for 40% of
the global grain exports, the US is the biggest beneficiary of soaring food
prices," the paper said. "The US has calculated rightly that high grain prices
would offset the decrease in its agricultural subsides. In fact, last year the
US spent only $9 billion on such subsidies".
Chinese academics predict high food process would continue for at least another
10 years. Last month the State Council, or China's cabinet, approved a mid- and
long-term grain security plan that aims for the country to be 95%
self-sufficient in grain over the next 12 years.
The plan outlines a state goal of reaching annual grain output above 500
million tonnes by 2010, and increasing production to more than 540 million
tonnes a year by 2020.
After years of debate, Beijing gave the green light last month to a
controversial plan to cultivate high-yield and pest-resistant genetically
modified (GM) crops designed to boost the country's agricultural productivity.
"Departments must fully understand the importance and urgency of this
significant project and waste no time to implement it," said a circular posted
on the website of the State Council.
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