CPEC: FOOD SECURITY GUARANTEE FOR CHINA
1. Historical precedence is indicative of colonialism and surrender of sovereignty germinating from change in cropping pattern, alteration of demography and capitulation of economy. Once economy has been made dependent on the colonizing power and has been decapitated the formal occupation and transference of power take place. Indigo plantation, destruction of social structures were the very methods of British annexation of India and a veritable similarity can be drawn with Chinese modus operandi in Pakistan. Pakistan has always leveraged its geography and offered itself as a rentier state, but it may have met its nemesis in China which may not be satisfied with the rentier status and may graduate to convert Pakistan into a vassal state. CPEC, and its positioning as the new strategic link to drive growth in Pakistan can draw a parallel from the British who built the Indian Railway to belatedly justify and legitimize its inglorious rule over the Indian territory, expansive and much advertised Chinese plans to build road, rail and infrastructure link between Gwadar and Xinjiang province, is all about colonizing Pakistan.
2. Colonization of Pakistan, contrary to the popular belief may not be so much of a geo-strategic compulsion to mitigate challenges of the access to IOR or overcoming the Malacca Dilemma but to literally satiate the appetite of the Chinese populace. China with 20% of global population is in possession of only 07% of arable land and this presents a mammoth challenge of feeding the burgeoning Chinese mass of humanity1. The Chinese with the new-found affluence has gravitated away from traditional diet to one that is more Western and consumes 63kg of meat per annum, this requirement demands an acre of land per capita to sustain while China presently can cater for 0.2 acres of land per capita. The gluttonous demand of agricultural land has driven the foreign policy agenda of China where in land beyond the Chinese territory is being sought to sustain its food demands. China has acquired 252,901 hectares of land in African countries like Cameroon, Mozambique and Zambia to augment the food security calculus. It is also amplified by 160 Billion USD loan offered to Africa wef 2000 to 20202.
Food Security Challenges of China
3. Grain Reserves. China’s grain reserve is estimated to be to be more than 670 million tons in 20213, adequate for more than a year’s supply. However, half the stockpile is corn, which the govt is trying to sell before it decays, forcing provinces to turn the grain into motor fuel. On the other hand, meat consumption in China has risen by 75% and 130% in urban and rural areas respectively while grain consumption has fallen by 50% since 19804. Imports of soybeans, used in animal feed, have grown so fast that the govt dropped the grain from its self-sufficiency list in 2014.
4. Farm Land. China’s land mass comprises of 960 million hectares of which only 122 million hectares is arable today. China lost 6.2% of its farmland between 1997 and 2008, as per a report of United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. Local government nevertheless continued to swallow fields for profitable real-estate development. Chinese Ministry of Agriculture finally did respond in 2017 by laying down a Red Line legislating a minimum mark of “maintaining 120 million hectares “of agricultural land. The state run Economic Daily had raised a red flag in February this year that this red line may be breached in another 10 years5. More alarming for the China is the report that 19.4% remaining arable land is contaminated. All the factors combined per capita arable land availability in China is 0.21 acres6.
5. Food Imports. China’s food basket is running dry as it has become a net importer of food grains. China imported 164.5 Million Tons of grain in 2021 an increase of 18.1% from the previous year; its food self-sufficiency rate has fallen to 76.8% in 2020 from 101.8% in 2000 and is predicted to touch the 65% mark by 2035. A surge of 6.4% on the import bill of China has occurred where as food grain import of India is 5.6% of its total import liabilities. Food insecurity and a growing food deficit can undermine a country’s social and economic stability. Decades of economic growth have enabled Chinese leaders to make major gains but this economic boom has created challenges of different nature based on demographic evolution and environmental stressors on geography.
CPEC Long Term Plan
6. The commotion over CPEC post Shahbaz Sharif’s anointment, the not-so-noble intentions of the Beijing to turn Pakistan into some kind of a proto Chinese colony are quite visible. Be it the challenge of debt servicing of CPEC debt which is to commence from 2024 and would add an additional 2.4Billion $ to the debt servicing bill of beleaguered Pak economy or the high tariff rate of CPEC electricity being sold to Pakistan Electricity, the noose is closing in on Pakistan. The present government has borrowed 2.3 Billion$ in Feb 22 for debt servicing. Pakistan’s debt servicing bill rose to 10.866 Billion $ for first three quarters of 2021–227. This debt servicing challenge is surely to aggravate from 2024 when Pakistan starts to service CPEC debts which by IMF estimates would cost them an additional 4.5 Billion $. CPEC has been operational from 2015 and despite claims by government agencies of positive impact of CPEC, the reality seems to be otherwise. New investments in Pakistan through BRI fell by 56% during the first half of 20228.
7. The icing on the cake is the agricultural land leased out to Chinese enterprises to set up ‘demonstration projects’ in areas ranging from seed varieties to irrigation technology”. This translates into China turning vast tracts of Pakistani territory, and this incl PoJK, Gilgit-Baltistan, Punjab and Sindh into virtual farms (Fig-1) or Chinese laboratories of profligate experimentation, which can very well go wrong. In 2020, President Alvi promulgated an ordinance called the Pakistan Island Development Authority (PIDA) which has the power to sell these islands to investors vide Section 47 of the Ordinance9. Economist and strategic affair experts believe that this is setting the stage for selling Bundal and Bhuddo islands (Fig-2) located South of Karachi and in close vicinity of Indian maritime borders (140km from Sir Creek) (inset of Fig-2) to China both for economic and defense related issues10. Similarly, Punjab State Government had approved leasing of land from 500 to 5000 acres to China for corporate farming as part of CPEC in Mar 2022.11 This land grab is turning Pakistan into a Chinese lab as the main thrust of CPEC actually lies in agriculture, laying out large no of projects and plans as part of LTP. Besides the land grab, China might push genetically modified crops and seeds in Pakistani lands and bring about large-scale Geo-engineering of the shared ecosystem of South Asia.
Prognosis
9. Prima facie the fiscal health of Pakistan would not permit it to wrangle its way out from the debt trap that has been laid by China. Default of payment would lead to forsaking sovereign rights over land and assets. While Gwadar may follow the Hambantota path and be leased to China, large tracts of agricultural land may also follow suit. It may also be pertinent to note here that Gwadar may not be the panacea for the Malacca Dilemma as the energy supply chain in absence of a pipe line and railway line from Gwadar cannot sustain transshipment of crude by road, however fresh food products and raw material sourced from Africa can be transshipped to Western China for consumption far earlier catering for the perishability factor of food items. The road and rail infrastructure would also be adequate to supply food items from Pak to China which would have been farmed in large plantations driven by electricity produced by CPEC Early Harvest projects.
11. There’s very little financial motive for China, which is easing off the fiscal infusion to Pakistan for the “redevelopment”. Even the CPEC plan notes that politics and security issues in Pakistan are overarching. “There are various factors affecting Pakistani politics, such as competing parties, religion, tribes, terrorists and Western intervention. The security sit is the worst in recent years”. Use of term “Western intervention” is a dead giveaway. Not only is the CPEC Beijing’s long-term plan to completely isolate Pakistan from the American arc of influence, it’s about expanding Chinese footprint in Asia and reconfiguring what many call the Asian century. The CPEC is the terrestrial equivalent of the maritime influence that China is gaining at sea, particularly the large swathe of SEZ it carves out in South China Sea to ensure its food security besides other strategic concerns.
1 Frank Tang & Orange Wang, https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3173619/china-didnt-hoard-grains-stockpiling-ensure-domestic-food published on 11 Apr 22 and accessed on 03 Aug 22.
2 Mathew Hill, Chinese Lending to Africa Fell to 16 Year Low when Pandemic Hit, 26 Apr 2022. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-26/Chinese-lending-to-africa-fell-to-16-year-low-when-pandemic-hit accessed on 04 Aug 22.
3 Frank Tang & Orange Wang, https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3173619/china-didnt-hoard-grains-stockpiling-ensure-domestic-food published on 11 Apr 22 and accessed on 03 Aug 22.
4 Tom Wahl, China’s Growing Demand for Meat published on 19 Sep 17. https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/news/coloumns/spotligh-on-economics-china-2019-growing-demand-for-meat-1 accessed on 05 Aug 22.
5 Frank Tang & Orange Wang, China Didn’t Hoard Grains.
6 https://chinapower.csis.org/china-food-security/ accessed on 06 Aug 22.
7https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/pakistan-fdi-india-fdi-pakistan-economy-pakistans-fdi-inflow-declines-while-india-records-highest-fdi-report-3-11343 published on 26 May 22 accessed on 11 Aug 22.
8https://m.economictimes.com/news/international/world-news/chinese-investments-drying-up-in-pakistan-russia/articleshow/93293563 accessed on 12 Aug 22.
9 https://economictimes.com/news/defence/is-pakistan-planning-to-gift-sindh-islands-to-china-through-the-pida-ordinance/articleshow/78679914.cms accessed on 12 Aug 22.
10 https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Belt-and-road/Pakistan -politicians-fear-losing-strategic-islands-to-China accessed on 12 Aug 22.
11 https://www.dawn.com/news/1677750 accessed on 11 Aug 22.
