Going out: China's food security from Southeast Asia

Abstract

China's new five-year plan recognised the looming insecurity in its agricultural sector. On the one hand, the country faces a diminishing arable land supply; on the other, a large population with rapidly increasing diets. Although large-scale trade and investment in this sector has been developing since the mid 1990s between China and a variety of African states, it is a relatively new addition to the more established China-Southeast Asian economic relationship. This article seeks to explore the impact that China's agricultural investments are having on two Southeast Asian countries – Indonesia and the Philippines – where there has been a marked increase in activities by Chinese firms in agricultural produce. The findings from these two case studies – and a series of smaller studies of the situation in other regional states – are used as a benchmark to clarify some of the consequences of China's agricultural investment from Southeast Asia for regional food security.

Keywords:

• China
• going out
• food security
• Southeast Asia

Notes

1 In comparison, China's total meat production in 2010 was estimated at 77.5 mln tonnes (Dairy Site.com 2010).

2 Had China already reached its target, this success would have been explicitly highlighted, as can be seen for other areas in Minister Xu's statement.

3 In turn, this disjuncture between domestic demand and overseas acquisitions could reinforce the argument that China's AODI is being driven by longer-term strategic concerns rather than by commercial interests.

4 For reasons of space, this article will only explore land-based cases of food security and Chinese AODI. Aqua-culture related examples, although numerous, will be a topic for future research.

5 An exception to this observation is the banana and pineapple sectors in the Philippines, where large scale vertical integral has brought the type of financial returns discussed previously (Briones 2008: 3).

6 Chinese tourists accounted for 6.21% of tourists to the Philippines in 2011, while half of the Philippines’ banana crop and other produce goes to China.

7 Of these, six were mainly focused on aqua-culture related interests, six were related to bio-fuels, three to agri-business, with the remaining three agreements focused on irrigation, technical and policy concerns.

8 An agro-business, Dole, was – until the Fuhua agreement – the largest recipient of land concessions from the Philippines government, with 9000 hectares granted (Bagayaua 2007).

9 In late September 2012, Itochu also took over Dole (Philippines) gaining control of all its farming operations throughout the country (Sarimento 2012).

10 (1) Assuming a production capacity of 356 days per year; (2) as the exact number of bioethanol plants covered in the fifth agreement are unknown (other than that there is more than one), a conservative estimate of only two plants has been used in this part of the calculation.

11 This was split 53–47 between SOE and POE investments.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nicholas Thomas

Nicholas Thomas is an Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and International Studies, City University of Hong Kong. His current research explores subnational ties between China, Japan, and Taiwan.