Import Expos Boost China's Plan to Reshape Global Food Markets

At the "China International Import Expo" held each November Chinese state-owned companies dangle huge agricultural purchases as bait to lure trading partners into participation in China's plan to reshape global food markets. 

At each Expo held since 2018 State media announced big purchases of food commodities by Chinese state-owned companies, and in recent years a plan to strengthen China's role in reshaping and controlling global food markets has begun to crystalize.

At the Import Expo held in November 2026 China's State-owned COFCO food conglomerate signed deals with "global partners" valued at $10 billion to fill its "shopping cart" with agricultural products like "wheat, vegetable oil, and sugar" as well as "high-quality consumer goods like wine, beer, and champagne." Company Chairman Li Guoqiang (whose given name translates as "strengthen the country") said COFCO is accelerating its efforts to become a world-leading and trusted agri-food enterprise. 

The focus on COFCO--an arm of the Chinese State dressed up as a company--points to China's strategy of turning global food trade into a concentrated market controlled by behemoth companies with China at the hub where it can dictate grades, standards, and practices used around the world and leverage its power as a food importer to achieve geopolitical objectives. 

Another objective highlighted in conjunction with recent Import Expos is China's quest to import agricultural products from "Belt and Road" countries, including a promise to import more cotton from West Africa, and this year's featuring of imports of oranges from South Africa and tropical fruit from Malaysia, coffee beans from Uganda, bulk corn shipments from Brazil and South Africa, and bulk wheat shipments from Kazakhstan.

The description of this year's Import Expo highlighted COFCO's long-term collaborative relationships with so-called "ABCD" commodity traders ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus, calling them "old friends." This reflects a decades-long effort by Chinese authorities to build up COFCO as a peer and competitor to the ABCD companies. COFCO's Fortune 500 ranking ahead of ADM, Bunge and LD signaled that the effort has succeeded.

Purchase agreements with the ABCDs are featured at many China Import Expos (see below). The text of this year's description emphasized COFCO's "long-term stable partnerships," "deeper mutually beneficial cooperation," and "complementary advantages" between COFCO and foreign partners. COFCO plans to work closely with ABCDs on business strategies like launching wine brands. 

Each of the ABCD commodity trading giants was named as a sponsor of a "Joint Initiative on Connecting Global Resources, Serving China’s Vast Market, and Building Resilient Agri-Food Supply Chains" released at this year's Import Expo along with Chinese State-controlled entities COFCO, the China Chamber of Commerce of Foodstuffs and Native Produce (CNFA), China Certification and Inspection Group, a State-owned machinery company, State-owned petroleum trader Nanguang Group, Bright Agricultural Development Group, Qianhai Mercantile Exchange, and Ningbo Zhoushan Port Co. An ABCD executive quoted by State media obediently included all the buzz words.

The description of the initiative includes vague language about open cooperation, sharing of resources, stable expectations, and reliable quality. It advocates long-term mutual trust, alignment of standards, an information transparency. The initiative waves shiny objects meant to attract buy-in from global bureaucrats--"food security," reducing food loss and advancing "green" and "low carbon development"--while calling for implementation of digital traceability. The UN's World Food Program was also mentioned--a hint that China is also coopting international organizations--although UN's WFP was not listed as a sponsor of the Chinese initiative.

Several past Expos featured commitments to purchase U.S. soybeans, but the United States has not even been mentioned in articles about this year's Expo. The 2022 and 2023 Import Expos featured signing ceremonies by Sinograin, China's grain reserve company, to procure 10 million metric tons of soybeans (signed in 2022) and 12 million metric tons (signed in 2023) from each of the ABCDs, COFCO, Syngenta, and Viterra Group. Those Expos were held while China was fulfilling purchase commitments made in the Phase One agreement with the U.S.  

Signing ceremony for an agreement to buy U.S. soybeans at the 2023 Import Expo.

Signing ceremony to buy from Brazil at the 2025 Import Expo.

At the 2025 Import Expo COFCO signed an agreement with the ABCDs to buy 20 million metric tons of Brazilian soybeans, soybean oil, and palm oil. This came a week after the Busan, South Korea summit where China committed to buy 25 mmt of U.S. soybeans annually.

China's agreements to buy U.S. soybeans and other farm products burnish the image China wants to create as the world's leader in reviving global farm trade. Incidentally, the big purchase agreements negotiated in the Phase One and the 2025-26 negotiations have supported China's plan by magnifying the role of State-owned behemoths in soybean and grain trade. Chinese propagandists recognized that the 2018 trade war would benefit China's state-owned companies. Over the past year, COFCO and Sinograin have jointly carried out the soybean purchase commitment. U.S.-China trade conflict over the last 8 years has advanced China's long-term objective of squeezing out small and privately-owned companies that are harder to control, leaving a market dominated by large companies. Chinese companies are extensions of the Chinese state who now promise to work hand-in-hand with a few large multinational behemoths that can be coopted and controlled until Chinese companies are able to supplant them. 

The prospect of large sales to a Chinese behemoth is enticing to trading companies, national governments and international organizations, but it comes with hidden risks. 

• Chinese buyers leverage their market power to enforce Chinese standards and practices in foreign countries: how commodities are graded, what seeds can be planted, what drugs or compounds may be used in livestock production, tolerances for foreign material, and traceability practices. Note the inclusion of the China Certification and Inspection Group as one of the sponsors of the initiative released at the Expo. Earlier this year China dictated to Brazilian authorities the standards they should use to examine foreign material in soybean shipments.
• China's aspiration to influence seeds and chemicals used by other countries is revealed by another description of the Import Expo that highlighted deals worth more than $800 million signed by Syngenta, the Swiss seed and farm chemical company acquired by State-owned behemoth SinoChem in 2017.
• While State media tout China as a reliable buyer, China's imports fluctuate widely from year to year. Investments made to sell to China are often wasted when China suddenly stops buying, suspends exporters, or launches antidumping investigations. The United States spent years negotiating a system to certify "never fed ractopamine" pork for export to China, but pork exports to China are now limited to modest volumes of offal. 
• China claims to be transparent, but its rejections of food imports are often opaque, leaving trading partners guessing. This year China has been rejecting Indian rice for containing GMO material, which some Indian counterparts interpret as a tactic to bully exporters and negotiate a lower price.
• China frequently leverages its power as a buyer of farm goods to reward or punish trading partners for political stances or trade policies. China has turned imports of Canadian and Australian farm products off and on based on unrelated political conflicts. In August, Ecuador's President (and friend of Trump) was rewarded for visiting China with the reinstatement of 8 suspended shrimp exporters.

The concentration of trade in the hands of a few behemoths and raising entry barriers reduces flexibility in global markets by freezing out smaller, more agile traders. While China claims its long-term purchase commitments stabilize markets, the concentration and huge volumes may actually set up the market for big upheavals like those seen in the 20th century when deals between Soviet state traders and ABCDs resulted in the "Russian Grain Robbery."