Mayan Braude
In some discussions of China’s food security today, sources have stated, “where famine is still a living memory, food security – or rather grain self-sufficiency – is seen as an essential component of national security, and Chinese wheat reserves remain a state secret” (Zhou 2015). In an effort to escape this legacy and the risk of history repeating itself, the central government (CCP) has emphasized the high priority of food security in numerous policy agendas since the end of the Mao Zedong era. While the country recovered from the Great Famine and agricultural outputs grew dramatically following the reforms of 1978, the legitimacy of the CCP still rests on the ability to deliver basic welfare rights for the population, as discussed by Elizabeth Perry. However, the new standards of China’s emerging, fast-growing class of citizens who have different demands and demonstrate more environmental conscientiousness than ever before have complicated this notion of welfare rights (Barton et al.). The issue of food security shares an intrinsic link with the environmental production dialogue. Some of the biggest threats to China’s domestic agrarian sector come from the sacrifice of arable land for urbanization as well as soil and water contamination from industrial waste, which jeopardize the safety of food produced domestically. The realization of the concept of “sustainable development” is relatively new, arguably only truly taking off in China since the appointment of Xi Jinping as President of the PRC in 2013. Xi’s promotion of new concepts of development suggests that China is “turning a leaf ” and perhaps reversing the damage done from the “pollution first, treatment later” approach of the early reform era (Li et al. 2009, 146). These new concepts of development emphasize ecological protection, green growth, and coordinated development. One concept that best conceptualizes the recent trajectory of China’s development is the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). This theory hypothesizes that as a country’s per capita income increases (along the x-axis), said country will accept environmental degradation (y-axis) up to a certain point in relation to per capita income before the curve tips over. A turning point indicates that increasing economic growth will eventually lead to the reduction of environmental damage. This theory adds dimension to the view that China’s development is a simple rags-to-riches story. This essay will use the EKC as a framework to analyze how China’s development, a byproduct of environmental awareness, has affected food security vis-a-vis economic growth. Experts estimate that the tipping point of the EKC took place around
13