【悉尼先驱早报0116】饥饿的中国开始控制外国农田

lilyma06

                        Hungry China expands control over foreign farmland                                                                http://www.smh.com.au/business/hungry-china-expands-control-over-foreign-farmland-20120116-1q36q.html


                                CHINESE companies have now acquired     about 8000 square kilometres of farmland around the world as the country looks abroad to feed its population, the biggest in the world.
               The Chinese current affairs magazine Phoenix Weekly reports that state-owned and private Chinese companies have been active in acquiring agricultural land, snapping up everything from palm oil plantations in Indonesia to soy bean fields in Argentina, and to farmland  in Australia.
                The rapid expansion of Chinese investment activities has unnerved politicians from Buenos Aires  to Canberra.
               
            Central to their concerns and those of regulators are the alleged footprints of the Chinese government behind these overseas acquisitions.
            The Chinese government's concern for food security is helping drive the global expansion. One
            of its proudest achievements is its ability to feed its 1.3 billion  citizens, and it has boasted repeatedly that
            it is nothing short of a miracle
            for Beijing to ''feed 23 per cent of the world's population with less than 11 per cent of [the] world's arable land''.
               However, that claim is increasingly being tested by the steady erosion of arable land in China as result of rapid urbanisation and deterioration of the environment. More than 10 per cent of Chinese farmland was polluted with heavy metals, the chief scientist of the Ministry of Environmental Protection, Wang Ben, said at a conference in Guangzhou in November.
                Chen Guoqiang, a senior research fellow from the Development Research Centre,  an advisory body  affiliated with the Chinese cabinet, said at the Beijing Forum last  year that ''China will become [the] world's largest importer of agricultural products within the next five to 10 years.''  China is already the world's largest importer of soy bean and cotton.
            The shrinking supply of arable land led China's Minister of Agriculture, Han Changfu, to declare in December that the time and conditions were ripe for agribusiness to seek more opportunities abroad.
                These expansion activities have been supported by the government. In a statement issued last year, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Commerce said the government encouraged and supported companies investing abroad, especially in ''agricultural, fishery, forestry and resources''.
            Individual companies can claim up to 30 million yuan ($4.6 million) a year in subsidies from the Chinese government.
            The government can also offer soft loans at below market rates to companies through its banks such as the Export and Import Bank of China and China Development Bank.
            The investment trend is likely to accelerate in future as China seeks to diversify its vast foreign reserves holding.
                The country's newly appointed chairman of the Securities Regulatory Commission, Guo Shuqing, said at a recent international finance forum in Beijing that up to half  of China's $3.2 trillion reserves could be channelled into foreign direct investment.
   


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/hungry-china-expands-control-over-foreign-farmland-20120116-1q36q.html#ixzz1jgAp1qT8


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