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Home » Opinion » Chinese Views
Auditors seek kernel of truth in granaries
By Lin Jianyang and Wang Xiuqiong |
April 16, 2009, Thursday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
CHINESE history is rich with grain adages such as, "To the king, the people are heaven; to the people, food is heaven."
The importance of grain is evident to modern China as Chairman Mao Zedong once said, "With grain in our hands, there is no panic in our hearts."
Not many people have a better understanding of these words than Hou Zhanying. He has worked for nearly 20 years at the Bureau of Grain in Xinmi County, Henan Province. Henan produces a quarter of China's wheat and is known as country's breadbasket.
China has less than 7 percent of the world's arable land and more than one-fifth of the global population, and Hou says Chinese officials need to be extremely careful with the country's food supply and safety.
That's why he has agreed to take part in a three-month, nationwide government audit of China's grain stocks. On April 1, more than 100,000 auditors began checking granaries and inventory books.
The State Administration of Grain said the audit will mainly target reserves kept by state-owned companies, but selective checks on grain stocks owned by private companies will also be conducted.
The purpose of the accounting is to "find out the true volume of our grain stocks" for national policy making, Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang said at a preparatory meeting on March 25.
Last April, Premier Wen Jiabao said China had grain reserves of 150 to 200 million tons. That's equal to 30 to 40 percent of China's annual grain consumption or double the 17-18 percent level regarded by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) as a safe minimum for global stocks.
One year later, there continue to be questions over whether those figures are accurate as some Chinese leaders and experts believe false volumes were reported by local grain authorities and companies.
According to government policies, granaries receive around 75 yuan (US$11) per ton of stored grain. Therefore, the more they store, the more money they are eligible to receive. This has led to the exaggeration of grain volumes.
Yuan Longping, an agricultural scientist known as the "father of hybrid rice," told the Guangzhou Daily last week that he believed there were some granaries "reporting phony figures of stocks to get subsidies."
"Since it is an open audit, they (granaries) might have been prepared and borrowed grain from others. As a result, inspectors will be cheated."
Yuan suggests secret investigations and more spot checks. He said that's what helped "catch two big fish" last year - one in northeast Heilongjiang Province and the other in Anhui Province.
The Heilongjiang scandal, which was exposed last May, involved one of China's largest granaries, Fujin No. 90. Its managers lied about stock volumes to get government subsidies. The corruption resulted in public losses of more than 100 million yuan. The same thing happened in Anhui, where granaries of several state-owned companies were found empty last April.
That's not the only problem with China's reserve food system. Companies have been reluctant to store grain because it has become more costly. They have to purchase grain from farmers based on set government prices.
For example, white wheat is fixed at 1,740 yuan per ton this year. Prices to sell that grain in the Chinese market are much lower than that, so companies end up illegally re-selling state-owned stocks to private buyers at higher prices. The result is that there is no concrete number for just how much grain China really has in national reserves.
Zheng Fengtian, an agricultural scholar with Beijing-based Renmin University of China, said the latest audit reflects concerns within the leadership over the real figure. "There is a big difference between official statistics and private calculations," Zheng told Xinhua.
Wrong figures pose a big threat to China's strategic policy of grain self-sufficiency and food security.
"Grain is a strategic material. In case of natural disasters, what can you do if you don't have grain? You have to store reserves," Yuan said.
The country set up a grain reserve system in 1990. Reserves are divided by their importance into four categories: central, local, national temporary and commodity. According to the State Administration of Grain, China's 1.3 billion people use about 500 million tons of grain annually, or more than 300 kilograms per person. Of that, China produces nearly 95 percent of the grain it consumes.
Lester R. Brown, known for his book "Who Will Feed China?" published in 1995, said food security in China is a highly sensitive issue. From 1959 to 1961, when China was hit by a severe famine, 30 million Chinese starved to death.
"This is why Beijing has worked so hard in recent decades to try and maintain grain self-sufficiency," Brown wrote in a statement e-mailed to Xinhua. He warned that aquifer depletion is now a particularly serious threat to grain production in China since about 80 percent of its grain harvest comes from irrigated land.
Yuan, the 79-year-old rice scientist, echoed Brown's view. "In 1959, a severe drought hit China and badly damaged grain yield," he said. "I saw five bodies of the starved beside farm fields and roadsides. It was really miserable."
Yuan called on the central government to ensure more grain reserves and to make them last for at least 100 days at China's consumption rate. That's 30 days more than the minimum 70 days of consumption set by the UNFAO.
"Currently, we don't know how many days our grain stocks can sustain people. That's why we need such a nationwide audit," he said. "The best target will be 180 days given China's population."
The entire national grain audit is supposed to be completed by the end of June. Then a final report will be submitted to the State Council, the Chinese Cabinet.
(The authors are Xinhua writers.)
The importance of grain is evident to modern China as Chairman Mao Zedong once said, "With grain in our hands, there is no panic in our hearts."
Not many people have a better understanding of these words than Hou Zhanying. He has worked for nearly 20 years at the Bureau of Grain in Xinmi County, Henan Province. Henan produces a quarter of China's wheat and is known as country's breadbasket.
China has less than 7 percent of the world's arable land and more than one-fifth of the global population, and Hou says Chinese officials need to be extremely careful with the country's food supply and safety.
That's why he has agreed to take part in a three-month, nationwide government audit of China's grain stocks. On April 1, more than 100,000 auditors began checking granaries and inventory books.
The State Administration of Grain said the audit will mainly target reserves kept by state-owned companies, but selective checks on grain stocks owned by private companies will also be conducted.
The purpose of the accounting is to "find out the true volume of our grain stocks" for national policy making, Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang said at a preparatory meeting on March 25.
Last April, Premier Wen Jiabao said China had grain reserves of 150 to 200 million tons. That's equal to 30 to 40 percent of China's annual grain consumption or double the 17-18 percent level regarded by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) as a safe minimum for global stocks.
One year later, there continue to be questions over whether those figures are accurate as some Chinese leaders and experts believe false volumes were reported by local grain authorities and companies.
According to government policies, granaries receive around 75 yuan (US$11) per ton of stored grain. Therefore, the more they store, the more money they are eligible to receive. This has led to the exaggeration of grain volumes.
Yuan Longping, an agricultural scientist known as the "father of hybrid rice," told the Guangzhou Daily last week that he believed there were some granaries "reporting phony figures of stocks to get subsidies."
"Since it is an open audit, they (granaries) might have been prepared and borrowed grain from others. As a result, inspectors will be cheated."
Yuan suggests secret investigations and more spot checks. He said that's what helped "catch two big fish" last year - one in northeast Heilongjiang Province and the other in Anhui Province.
The Heilongjiang scandal, which was exposed last May, involved one of China's largest granaries, Fujin No. 90. Its managers lied about stock volumes to get government subsidies. The corruption resulted in public losses of more than 100 million yuan. The same thing happened in Anhui, where granaries of several state-owned companies were found empty last April.
That's not the only problem with China's reserve food system. Companies have been reluctant to store grain because it has become more costly. They have to purchase grain from farmers based on set government prices.
For example, white wheat is fixed at 1,740 yuan per ton this year. Prices to sell that grain in the Chinese market are much lower than that, so companies end up illegally re-selling state-owned stocks to private buyers at higher prices. The result is that there is no concrete number for just how much grain China really has in national reserves.
Zheng Fengtian, an agricultural scholar with Beijing-based Renmin University of China, said the latest audit reflects concerns within the leadership over the real figure. "There is a big difference between official statistics and private calculations," Zheng told Xinhua.
Wrong figures pose a big threat to China's strategic policy of grain self-sufficiency and food security.
"Grain is a strategic material. In case of natural disasters, what can you do if you don't have grain? You have to store reserves," Yuan said.
The country set up a grain reserve system in 1990. Reserves are divided by their importance into four categories: central, local, national temporary and commodity. According to the State Administration of Grain, China's 1.3 billion people use about 500 million tons of grain annually, or more than 300 kilograms per person. Of that, China produces nearly 95 percent of the grain it consumes.
Lester R. Brown, known for his book "Who Will Feed China?" published in 1995, said food security in China is a highly sensitive issue. From 1959 to 1961, when China was hit by a severe famine, 30 million Chinese starved to death.
"This is why Beijing has worked so hard in recent decades to try and maintain grain self-sufficiency," Brown wrote in a statement e-mailed to Xinhua. He warned that aquifer depletion is now a particularly serious threat to grain production in China since about 80 percent of its grain harvest comes from irrigated land.
Yuan, the 79-year-old rice scientist, echoed Brown's view. "In 1959, a severe drought hit China and badly damaged grain yield," he said. "I saw five bodies of the starved beside farm fields and roadsides. It was really miserable."
Yuan called on the central government to ensure more grain reserves and to make them last for at least 100 days at China's consumption rate. That's 30 days more than the minimum 70 days of consumption set by the UNFAO.
"Currently, we don't know how many days our grain stocks can sustain people. That's why we need such a nationwide audit," he said. "The best target will be 180 days given China's population."
The entire national grain audit is supposed to be completed by the end of June. Then a final report will be submitted to the State Council, the Chinese Cabinet.
(The authors are Xinhua writers.)
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