China's chemistry-loving leaders built a biofuel industry 25 years ago to dispose of surplus grain generated by policy mistakes. Chief Chemical Engineer Xi Jinping is now in charge, but he's obsessed with food security and EVs. China's biofuel industry is under threat from another chemistry breakthrough based on China's favorite raw material: coal. An article on a Chinese chemical industry site last year saw little hope for China's biofuel industry, describing it as plagued by oversupply, in a constant state of structural adjustment, and facing a continuous barrage of threats, including soaring raw material costs and a shrinking petroleum market. The latest threat is the emergence of a cheaper coal-based ethanol undermining China's plant-based fuel ethanol industry. China first launched a plan to produce fuel ethanol in 2001, and within a few years several facilities had been constructed in grain-producing provinces to distill a massive stockpile of old corn ...
Retired USDA economist Fred Gale peers through the "dim sums" of puzzling data to provide insight about China's agricultural markets in bite-size pieces like Chinese "dim sum" snacks.