China's "American food hegemony" narrative

An "American food hegemony" (美国粮食霸权) narrative seems to be creeping into official Chinese communist doctrine as Chinese leaders look to create an external enemy--probably to divert attention from their own mistakes on covid, ill-considered support for Russia's Ukraine invasion, soaring debt and youth unemployment. 

An October 2022 Economic Daily commentary asserted that, "The shadow of the United States has been behind every global food crisis," and accused the U.S. of being the "black hand behind the scenes" in the current "global food crisis." 

According to the narrative, the United States disingenuously promotes free trade in agricultural goods while abusing its monopoly power to create global food crises in 1978, 2008 and 2022 in order to cement its dominance and control over other countries. 

Pieces of the food hegemony story have been rattling around in China for two decades and are now being formed into a standard narrative. Elements include:

• Henry Kissinger once said if you control food you can control people. 
• In the 1970s, as the U.S. economy and the dollar weakened, the U.S. turned to food as a way of "controlling the world's food bowls." 
• The U.S. used food aid, the "green revolution," GMOs, and financialization of commodities to undermine food self-sufficiency of traditional big agricultural countries like Argentina and Mexico, and power shifted to American hands. 
• While the United States shapes a "moral image" in the global market, Americans created global food crises by tying agriculture to energy (through use of corn for fuel), restricting grain exports, and using market power of multinational grain trading companies to manipulate prices at will and create food security problems that earn huge profits for Americans. 
• With "sinister intentions, the U.S. continually exacerbates regional conflicts, triggering global food shortages. 

Economic Daily blamed the United States as the "instigator of the Ukraine conflict." In the next paragraph, the writers claim Americans instigated allies to launch sanctions against Russia that disrupted the global food supply chain, leading to rising food prices. 

The October Economic Daily commentary was signed by "Guo Yan", a name affixed to a series of anti-American rants on topics such as responsibility for covid-19 and opposition to Belt and Road. The food hegemony argument was fully developed a year ago in a 27-page report by two Everbright Securities analysts.  Another version was offered last month in an April 13, 2023 Economic Daily commentary by Liu Hui complaining that the departure of multinational grain traders from Russia constituted a "weaponization" of food that created a food crisis.

There are signs that the Economic Daily polemic is official Chinese communist party policy. 

• The language and general argument are very similar to a February 2023 Foreign Ministry paper,  "American hegemony, bullying, and its harm"--complaining about U.S. bullying and belligerence in global affairs, fomenting of "color revolutions," and its monopolization of technology and global institutions. 
• The Economic Daily piece refers to America an "agricultural power" (农业强国) two months before Xi Jinping announced his goal of making China an "agricultural power" in a speech to the December meeting on rural work. The reference to "the world's food bowls" echoes the first feature of an agricultural power: Chinese people should hold their own food bowls tightly in their own hands at all times. 
• The keynote speech at China's April 20 Agriculture Ministry's annual outlook meeting focused on the term 农业强国, translated by the meeting's interpreters as an "agricultural power," which means that the country is not only a big producer with advanced technology but also must be self-sufficient.
• The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs agricultural outlook web site posted its own summary of the Everbright Securities hegemony discourse, an implied endorsement.

The fear of American control is the secret sauce behind China's obsession with "national food security." Xi Jinping has said that, "If China relies on imported food, others could lead us around by the nose" (like a water buffalo).

China spent billions of dollars building up state-owned soybean crushing capacity, financed failed investments in Latin American soybean farming and logistics, rushed through a troubled Ukrainian grain-loan deal to avoid relying on U.S. corn, financed COFCO's acquisition of Nidera and Noble Agri, financed the ChemChina acquisition of Syngenta, sought control of the UN's FAO and World Food Program, denied its farmers access to transgenic corn and soybeans for 20 years, and is now pushing an unrealistic effort to increase soybean self-sufficiency. 

Since most Americans probably agree with the notions behind the Chinese narrative, we will point out here that the "American food hegemony" narrative is based on a series of fallacies:

• Musings by a self-styled intellectual do not dictate U.S. policy through multiple administrations of competing political parties over 50 years.
• Mexico and Argentina had/have more fundamental problems than lack of food self-sufficiency. 
• The hegemony theory ignores the U.S. failure to prevent Brazil from becoming such a formidable export competitor
• The notorious "Russian Grain Robbery" during the 1970s demonstrated that the interests of multinational grain traders did not align with those of the U.S. government. 
• The U.S. cannot control other countries via grain embargoes. Jimmy Carter's grain embargo on the Soviet Union was notoriously ineffective.
• Food aid during the cold war was largely meant to counter Soviet aid; now it's driven by fears of Chinese dominance in Africa.
• Farming subsidies are a creature of U.S. domestic politics; historically subsidies undermined the international competitiveness of American agriculture.