Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

Chinese news media signaled that a revival of agricultural trade with the United States is coming. Soybean purchases by state-owned companies have begun, immediately driving up soybean prices in Chicago. Chinese officials wary of downward pressure on domestic prices will have to carefully consider how broader purchases of U.S. commodities could impact their own fragile markets in China. On July 2, 2026 Chinese Ministry of Commerce spokesman He Yadong told a press conference that China and the U.S. have agreed in principle to include agricultural products in negotiations for reciprocal tariff reductions. He said enterprises will conduct trade independently based on market principles, actual demand, and market conditions. China is willing to work with the U.S. to create favorable condition for bilateral agricultural trade, the spokesman said.  While this response conveyed no specifics, it contrasts with a November 13, 2025 press conference where the same spokesman refused to co...

China's beef imports during April and May 2026 were about equal to year-earlier volumes, but behind the pace set during January-February. A rebound in shipments by the main supplier--Brazil--suggests that China's beef imports will rebound as well in coming months.  HS 0201, 0202. China Customs Data. Imports in the categories specified for China's special safeguard duty program totaled 1.28 million metric tons for January-May 2026, up about 200,000 metric tons from the same period in 2025. Imports primarily consisted of over 1 million metric tons of frozen boneless beef (HS 020230), the category that also accounted for essentially all of the year-over-year increase. Imports of offal, beef fat, canned and prepared beef--not subject to safeguard quotas or duties--totaled 71,000 metric tons, and they were nearly double the quantity from a year earlier.  China's commerce ministry announced that beef imports from Australia had reached 90% of their quota by June 1. The minist...

China spends an enormous amount of money on agricultural infrastructure, but a string of exposés in State media, government crackdowns, and "scared straight" meetings for rural officials reveal that spending is extremely bloated, consists mostly of showpiece projects, and nobody really knows for sure what's happening in the hinterland.  A China Central TV broadcast on April 14, 2026  got attention for exposing an extravagant complex built as a farmer training center in a Chinese county. CCTV journalists visited an 11-building "Jun'an County Modern Agriculture Public Practical Training Base" on a 9.2-hectare (137 mu) site sandwiched between a highway and an excavated hillside. The compound included swanky hotels, two apartment buildings for experts, office buildings, restaurants, a sports center with badminton courts and a fitness center, chess rooms, gardens, and decorative ponds, but no facilities or equipment related to agriculture. The small sign on the g...

Xi Jinping's highly scripted visit to the countryside last week highlighted the communist party's intent to overhaul rural China in the latest 5-year plan (2026-30).  In a carefully staged photo, Xi stands in a recently harvested wheat field socially distanced from lesser officials and harvester operators. A tractor is strategically placed in the background. On June 24, 2026, Xi made a rare trip outside of Beijing to inspect rural areas of the Dezhou Municipality of northern Shandong Province. State media coverage made it clear that the trip was meant to feature priorities for agricultural and rural modernization with Chinese characteristics during the 15th 5-year plan. A description of the inspection placed in State media outlets  emphasized that Xi's visit to Dezhou was made "with matters of national importance in mind." A second version emphasized measures to achieve Chinese-style rural and agricultural modernization  and improvement of rural life under the lea...

China's October 2025 commitment to buy U.S. soybeans has bifurcated the Chinese soybean trade. Beijing-based state-owned companies have been buying U.S. soybeans to fulfill China's purchase commitment while crushers in the provinces have been buying from Brazil and Argentina. A stark contrast in the regional breakdown of Chinese soybeans importers this year suggests that state-owned companies are carrying out the purchases of U.S. soybeans.  As we showed in a recent post , China has purchased nearly all the 12 mmt of U.S. soybeans promised in October 2025, and 8.3 million metric tons of those U.S. soybeans have arrived in China as of May 2026. Customs data shows all 8.3 mmt of those U.S. soybeans were imported by companies headquartered in Beijing. The headquarters of state-owned giants COFCO and Sinograin are in Beijing, but there is little or no soybean processing capacity there. No U.S. soybeans were imported by companies in other provinces.  Imports in million metric tons ...

The 2026 China Agricultural Development Report released on June 10 had a theme of "Launching the 15th Five-Year Plan: Structural Transformation and Optimized Trade" that peddled the priority of upgrading the "quality" of the Chinese diet, farm machinery and technology, agricultural imports and exports during the 2026-2030 five-year plan. The report was written by PhD economists, includes input from a prestigious international institute based in Washington, and it is littered with buzz words and mathematical modeling. But the report's guiding concept is the notion that a resource-stressed country should try to produce all the farm products it consumes and simultaneously export more of them.  A summary of the report in Farmers Daily emphasized foreign trade and self-sufficiency, noting that China had an agricultural trade deficit of $103.25 billion in 2025 on agricultural exports of $104.16 billion and ag imports of $207.41 billion. China was the world's top...