China Angrily Denies Evidence of Slow Planting, Potential Crop Shortages

China’s state-run Global Times on Wednesday published a fulminating editorial denying widespread reports of serious problems with China’s spring planting season, including shortages of fertilizer and farmers prevented from tending to their fields by coronavirus lockdowns.

“China’s spring farming, the first major battle to ensure sufficient grain production for the whole year, is in full swing across the country, despite challenges posed by Covid-19 and other factors, as officials are taking various efforts to support farmers and ensure food security,” the Global Times insisted. 

The editorial quoted one farmer, one seed distributor, one government minister, and the usual unnamed “Chinese experts” to conclude that reports of a looming food crisis are lies spread by the “propaganda arm of the U.S. government,” as Voice of America News (VOA) was contemptuously described.

The Global Times argued that since China imports a small percentage of most crops other than soybeans, disruptions due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict should be inconsequential — as if losing 10 percent of the corn supply for a population of over a billion people is a trivial concern.

“Ukraine is China’s main source of corn imports, and the corn in China is mainly used as feed, and wheat is also used as feed, so there is little impact,” a Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher blithely declared — a statement that would puzzle anyone who has actually tried to raise livestock.

Despite its nasty cracks about foreign propaganda, the Global Times article did not really challenge any of the troubling reports from VOA and other foreign sources; it merely argued the skyrocketing prices and short supply of imported agricultural products and fertilizer are manageable problems. Hardscrabble Chinese farmers might be less sanguine than Communist Party editorialists about the price of fertilizer increasing by 30 percent.

The Global Times continued its harangue on Wednesday with the first of a promised three-part installment “investigating” the “smear tactics” employed by foreign reporters who think China might be headed for a food crisis. 

The first installment spent a great deal of time questioning the motives of media outlets that report bad news about China, and very little on disputing any of the disturbing information. For example, the outlet unleashed a lengthy tirade against a Taiwanese “conspiracy theory” analyst who noted Chinese social media posts from late last year about alleged food hoarding. 

By the end of its “investigative report,” the Global Times was reduced to whining that if a food crisis does break out, it is the fault of the United States, which is somehow responsible for Russia invading Ukraine and disrupting global food and fertilizer markets.

One reason Communist Party propagandists dump so much ink on the food crisis story is that it can be seen as an indictment of China’s draconian “zero-Covid” policies. The Global Times focused on supply disruptions from Russia and Ukraine, but the farmers warning international media about the spring planting season are mostly complaining about coronavirus lockdowns blocking shipments to their farms and preventing them from working in their fields.