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Chinas farming land closer to critical level PDF Print E-mail
Saturday, 19 April 2008

The amount of farming land in China shrank closer to “critical” levels last year, state press reported, amid concerns in the world’s most populous country over how to contain food costs, reports AFP.

The rush in modern China to turn traditional farming areas into industrial zones or residential areas for expanding cities was again one of the factors behind the decline in 2007, the China Daily said, citing the land ministry.

However, the ministry said the pace of decline was slower than in previous years thanks to government efforts to curb the problem, such as cracking down on illegal land grabs by developers and local officials.

Last year, the amount of arable land fell by 40,700 hectares (100,500 acres) to 121.73 million hectares, according to the ministry.

The government has for many years said that China would face a “critical” situation when the amount of farming land fell to 120 million acres, and it is now trying to devise ways to use what is left more efficiently.

“The aim of the plan is to better protect the limited arable land and make more efficient use of areas designated for development,” the head of the ministry’s planning commission, Hu Cunzhi, was quoted as saying.

Hu said 120 million acres would continue to be regarded as the “critical” level, unless there was a “biological revolution” that boosted farm yields.

The declining farm land has coincided with a sharp increase in food prices in China over the past year, which has been one of the main factors behind soaring inflation.

The government said yesterday that food prices jumped 21 percent in the first quarter of this year, as inflation hit 8.0 percent.

Another report adds: China’s combined direct investments abroad amounted to 92.05 billion U.S. dollars by the end of 2007, said a senior official of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT) yesterday.

Zhang Wei, vice chairman of the CCPIT, said here that since the government initiated the “going global” strategy for domestic companies in 1998, Chinese companies’ enthusiasm for investing areas has been on the rise, big privately-owned enterprises in particular.
 
The CCPIT, and also the China Chamber of International Commerce, have formulated programs in 2006 to facilitate domestic companies’ global strategy to help them make better use of the domestic and international markets, he added.

The 2nd Chinese Enterprise Outbound Investment Conference, organized by the CCPIT and the Ministry of Commerce, would be held from April 22-23 in Beijing, according to the CCPIT.

By the end of 2006, more than 5,000 Chinese investment entities had established almost 10,000 companies overseas in 172 countries and regions, with the combined outbound investment reached 90.63 billion U.S. dollars.

Another report adds: Foreign-invested companies have basically dominated China’s soybean import and its import pricing, which actually squeezed the growth potential of domestic soybean processing enterprises, an official said, reports Xinhua.

China’s dependency on imported soybean has reached 60 percent, and the domestic soybean price is subject to international price fluctuations, said He Yanli, vice-director of the Industry Department under National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

She added that China should play a leading role in steering the development of soybean industry, in view of its importance to national economy and people’s livelihood.

For this, China will issue guidelines on market access, industrial distribution, technological improvements, market activities and orderly import; he disclosed .

Statistics show that foreign-invested companies boasted soybean fat processing capacity of 25.70 million tons in 2006, accounting for nearly one-third of the national total, and they actually processed nearly half of the country’s soybean.
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