China Moves from a 'Cultural Revolution' to an Agricultural Revolution
Although China is the third largest country in the world in terms of land area (9.7 million square kilometers), it ranks 131st in terms of arable land per capita, at less than one tenth of a hectare per person. That is why China has often struggled to produce enough food to feed its immense population. In the late 1950’s, its leader Mao Tse-tung initiated a poorly designed strategy to modernize its agricultural sector by collectivizing production and following Soviet agronomic strategies, called the Great Leap Forward. That effort failed disastrously, resulting in an estimated 30 million deaths due to starvation, the largest single country death toll from famine in modern history between 1960 and 1962.
Unfortunately, the government of China learned the wrong lessons from the failures of the Great Leap Forward, launching a new campaign in 1966 to rid the government of ‘technocrats’ and restore revolutionary vigor to the country, which they believed would help to bolster their economy. This new campaign was described by Mao and his associates as a “Cultural Revolution,” and the disruption that it wreaked on China and its economy lasted for nearly a decade. It is estimated that as many as 200 million people were forced into chronic food insecurity due to the economic problems, and as many as 1.5 million people were killed or committed suicide due to their harsh treatment by the Red Guard, the youth movement empowered by Mao to carry out the revolution. Even though it was not directly targeted, China’s agricultural sector also took a hit–it is estimated that per capita production of food grains (mainly rice and wheat) by 1968 had fallen to 1953 levels.
The Cultural Revolution came to an abrupt end in 1976 after the death of Mao Tse-tung and his widow and three of her associates–called the Gang of Four–tried to rekindle the chaos Their efforts were quickly repudiated by the rest of the Chinese national government, led by acting premier Deng Xiaoping. The members of the Gang were arrested as they sought to attend an emergency meeting of the Chinese Politburo (the governing body of the Chinese Communist Party) in late 1976, and put on trial in 1981 for engaging in ‘anti-Party’ activities. Mao’s widow, Jiang Qing, a former actress, and one of her allies were sentenced to death, later commuted to life sentences, and the other two received long prison terms.
Premier Deng Xiaoping, who had been purged from the government of China during the Cultural Revolution, led his country in embracing at least some elements of market capitalism for their economy between 1977 and his death in 1997. In the agricultural sector, that reform initially involved shifting more responsibility for decision-making back to individual producers, first allowing them multi-year land leases and flexibility about what crops to plant. In 1984, the government allowing them to freely market at least a portion of their crops after meeting grain procurement requirements. An econometric study indicates that 47 percent of the country’s growth in agricultural production between 1978 and 1984 can be attributed to widening adoption of this new household responsibility system.
At the same time that the organizational structure of Chinese agriculture was changing, the country was also increasing its investment in agricultural research. Since China’s farmers had already reached the point where they were utilizing nearly all of arable land for agriculture, it was clear that the only way to expand production was to improve productivity. According to data collected by IFPRI, reported Chinese agricultural research spending increased from 600,000 yuan in 1961 to 10.5 million yuan in 2007 on an inflation-adjusted basis (1999=100), rising at a spectacular 36 percent per year. As a result of improved agricultural technology, Chinese grain production increased about 350 percent over that period while the share of the country’s population working in agriculture fell from 80 percent in 1950 to 35 percent in 2011.
With a population of greater than 1.3 billion, the government of China has been gradually drifting away from its food self-sufficiency stance, although it was not formally abandoned until 2014.
In 2008, spending by the government of China on agricultural research surpassed comparable public sector spending by the U.S. government for the first time, and they continue to soar past the United States. In fact, China’s public sector spending in this area during 2019-2021 was roughly double the level of U.S> public sector spending.
In addition, China has pursued several other routes to gain access to agricultural technology to help advance their own sector. For example, they were able to gain control over important proprietary agricultural technology through their purchases of major agribusiness firms such as Smithfield Foods, a major U.S. hog integrator, and the Swiss life sciences company Syngenta in 2017, among others. Chinese nationals have also been charged with stealing intellectual property related to such items as seeds and agricultural chemicals from both the U.S. private and public sectors in recent years.
In recent decades, a large number of Chinese students have attended U.S. universities to gain more knowledge about our scientific advances. According to data reported by the Voice of America, there were more than 289,000 Chinese nationals attending U.S. universities in the 2022-2023 school year, although that number was a 22 percent decline from the record enrollment level achieved in the 2019-2020 school year.
The government of China is also known to be acquiring massive amounts of farmland in developing countries in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa and to a lesser extent in Latin America. Chinese purchases of land in the United States has gained considerable public attention in recent years, but they have been much less aggressive in this country than they have in other parts of the world, owning less than 200,000 acres of U.S. land as of 2021, according to USDA reports on this topic. About half of U.S. states already have restrictions in place on foreign ownership of farmland, and it seems likely that the next U.S, farm bill will include additional provisions addressing this matter.
