How Severe Are China’s Food Security Challenges?

Food security is critical to the well-being and stability of all countries. Decades of economic growth have enabled considerable strides in increasing access to food across China, but this growth has also generated new demographic demands and environmental strains. Global shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine, U.S.-China tensions, and the effects of climate change have left Chinese policymakers anxious about China’s food security issues. This ChinaPower report lays out the most pressing threats to China’s food security as well as key areas of progress and resilience. 

Challenges to China’s Food Security

For Chinese leaders, food security (粮食安全)  is an “important foundation of national security.” Chinese leader Xi Jinping famously remarked that “solving the food problem for more than one billion people has always been the top priority of our party in governing the country.” Between 2013 and 2024, Xi mentioned food security in over 450 speeches, meetings, inspections, and other activities.¹

China faces three main interrelated challenges to its food security, each of which is analyzed below: 

1. Surging Food Consumption
2. Constraints on Domestic Production
3. Reliance on Foreign Imports

Challenge 1: Surging Food Consumption 

China’s rapid economic growth has brought both enormous benefits and new challenges with respect to food security. On the upside, socioeconomic gains have fueled dramatic reductions in China’s undernourished population. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the rate of undernourishment in China’s population fell from 10.3 percent in 2001 to 2.5 percent (or less) by 2010.² This decline coincided with a tripling of annual per capita disposable income from just 4,070 RMB to 12,520 RMB over the same period, according to Chinese government figures. 

China’s increasingly well-off population has led to surging demand for food. In particular, the emergence of China’s urban middle class has corresponded with a shift away from a grain-oriented diet to a more expensive, meat-heavy intake. Today, China is the largest consumer of meat and fish in the world, consuming almost 168 million metric tons of meat and fish in 2023—more than a quarter of the world’s total. At almost 60 million metric tons consumed, pork was China’s top meat choice. The enormous demand for meat also directly translates to high demand for animal feeds, particularly soybeans. 

More affluent urban residents have likewise developed an appetite for other resource-intensive foods, such as dairy products. In 2022 alone, China consumed 64 million metric tons of milk and imported 24 million metric tons, making it the largest milk importer in the world. 

Growing consumption has coincided with more food waste. China is the largest waster of food in the world, generating over 200 million metric tons of food waste in 2022. On a per capita basis, China is roughly on par with many other major economies. Chinese individuals wasted an average of 142 kilograms (kg) each in 2022, which is slightly less than the United States (159 kg per person), but considerably more than neighboring Japan (81 kg per person).

Given concerns about China’s food security, food waste has become a pressing policy issue. The Chinese government initiated multiple campaigns to reduce food waste, such as the Clean Plate campaign in 2013 and 2020. In 2021, China enacted the Anti-Food Waste Law to institutionalize monitoring and punishment mechanisms, particularly for the food service and retail sectors. 

Challenge 2: Constraints on Domestic Production

China has long sought self-sufficiency in food. In 1996, the Chinese government published a white paper on food security that called for achieving a self-sufficiency rate of 95 percent for grains.³ In 2019, China released another government white paper on food security, maintaining the 95 percent target and adding that China must have “absolute security” in staple grains (wheat and rice).

“The rice bowls of the Chinese people must be firmly in our own hands. Our rice bowls should be filled mainly by Chinese crops.”

Xi Jinping, 2021

Toward these ends, the Chinese government has identified domestic production as the “top priority.” China has achieved impressive gains in domestic production over the years and transformed itself into the largest food producer in the world. It produced 7.5 billion metric tons of food in 2022, nearly 3 billion metric tons more than the runner-up, India. China is also almost twice as efficient in wheat production per hectare as the United States. 

According to FAO estimates, China—through domestic production and imports—is able to supply enough food to meet 139 percent of its population’s basic caloric needs. That is ahead of Japan (110 percent) and virtually the same as Europe (138 percent), but behind the United States, which, according to recent estimates, is able to meet 153 percent of its population’s needs through domestic production and imports. 

Despite significant progress, Chinese leaders remain acutely aware that the country faces significant challenges to domestic production. 

One of the top constraints is the availability of arable farmland. Rapid industrial growth, sprawling urbanization, overcultivation, widespread pollution, and the growing impacts of climate change are significantly straining Chinese agriculture. According to the World Bank, China’s total arable land declined by over 12 million hectares between 2009 and 2021. By 2022, China had 31 percent less arable land than the United States, while having four times the population. 

Beijing has sought to reverse the loss of arable land. In 2006, Chinese leaders established a “red line of 120 million hectares of arable land” in the11th Five-Year Plan. Xi reinforced this red line repeatedly in his speeches and guidelines, including “zero tolerance” and “lifetime responsibility” measures to punish officials who fail to maintain the designated red line of arable land in their jurisdictions.

In a sign of its domestic production challenges, some Chinese farmers have resorted to the overuse of fertilizers to try to help boost crop output. Between 2000 and 2015, China’s fertilizer usage per hectare of arable land increased by 67 percent. While fertilizers can increase output, they also exacerbated China’s arable land problems in the long run, contributing to low nutrient utilization, soil loss, pollution, and broader environmental damage. 

In 2015, the Chinese government began promoting “zero growth of fertilizer use” in major policy documents, including the 2016 and 2017 versions of the “Central Document No. 1,” and as a result, fertilizer use declined 17 percent by 2022. China nevertheless remains one of the world’s top consumers of fertilizer, with its usage rate at over three times that of the United States and the European Union. 

Water security challenges exacerbate China’s food production issues. China has roughly the same amount of freshwater resources as the United States, but its population is more than four times larger, and it uses more than twice as much freshwater for agriculture. Adding to these challenges, decades of rapid urbanization and industrialization in eastern and southern China have significantly shifted the center of gravity of Chinese agricultural production toward the north and west, which are relatively water-scarce and suffer from higher degrees of water stress than the rest of the country.

Climate change is supercharging these problems by causing more droughts, extreme heat, and floods. For example, a 2023 study found that extreme rainfall led to an 8 percent drop in Chinese rice yields over the past two decades.

Challenge 3: Reliance on Foreign Imports

Surging demand for food and constraints on domestic production have forced China to look abroad. China first became a net food importer in 2004, and in 2021, it surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest food importer. According to ChinaPower estimates, China imported a staggering $215 billion worth of food in 2023.⁴

As a result, the country’s overall self-sufficiency for food declined from 94 percent in 2000 to 66 percent in 2020. Chinese experts have warned of a looming dip to 59 percent by 2030.  

China’s reliance on imports is not uniform across food products. In some areas, such as vegetables, China meets virtually all of its demand through domestic production. For other goods, China is heavily dependent on other countries. For instance, China relies on foreign suppliers (namely Brazil and the United States) for over 80 percent of its soybeans.  

China’s sizable food imports leave it susceptible to volatility in global food prices. When international food prices spike, it can tighten the availability of those goods in China’s domestic market and contribute to food shortages and inflation at home. Researchers found that upward shocks in international food prices accounted for approximately 20 percent of fluctuations in China’s overall inflation between 1998 and 2023.

Global instability in food prices has at times posed significant political challenges for Beijing. In 2018, an outbreak of African swine fever spread from Europe to China, causing China to lose roughly 28 million metric tons of pork production over three years. This strained the supply of the most consumed meat in China and forced it to rapidly scale up imports at a high cost. Chinese officials became alarmed by the crisis, with some calling the issue a “national priority” and resorting to using frozen pork reserves and subsidies to stabilize local volatility. 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 also led to significant turbulence in global food trade. Many major food exporters, such as India, began to restrict food exports to stabilize their own domestic prices. China simultaneously faced declining grain imports and rising import prices. Available trade data indicates that China imported 10 percent less grain in 2022 but paid nine percent more compared to the previous year. 

The supply shock from the Ukraine war accelerated China’s desire to diversify and reduce its food imports. Amid the war, Xi Jinping focused significant political attention on the issue. In 2022, the year Russia invaded Ukraine, Xi mentioned “food security” in at least 71 speeches, meetings, and other activities—double the year before. 

It is worth noting that China can extract some benefit from its large food trade deficit. China’s massive market creates economic leverage over food-exporting economies that depend heavily on Chinese consumers, such as the United States and Brazil. For instance, U.S. farmers have been more dependent on the Chinese market than China has been on U.S. imports. China has leveraged this advantage when it levied tariffs on U.S. agricultural imports into China in retaliation against U.S. tariffs in 2018 and 2025. 

China’s Food Security Strengths

While China faces considerable challenges to its food security, it has notable strengths in three key areas: 

1. Diversification of Food Imports
2. High Levels of Food Access
3. Heavy Investment in Agricultural Innovation

Strength 1: Diversification of Food Imports 

Given China’s growing food imports, reliable trade partners are crucial to its push for food security. Xi acknowledged the importance of food import diversification at a 2020 central rural work meeting. In his work report speech to the 20^th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2022, he called for China to “build a diversified food supply system.” 

These exhortations come in the context of rising geopolitical tensions, particularly between the United States and China. The United States has long been one of China’s largest foreign food suppliers, but in recent decades, China has incrementally reduced its reliance on food from the United States. 

This process accelerated during the U.S.-China trade war that began in 2018 during President Donald Trump’s first term. In January 2020, Washington and Beijing put a pause on escalating the trade war by signing the Phase One trade agreement, which committed China to purchasing an additional $200 billion worth of U.S. products (compared to 2017 levels) in four sectors, including agriculture. U.S.-China trade in agriculture did rebound somewhat, but China failed to meet its Phase One purchase commitments. As of 2023, just 13 percent of China’s food imports came from the United States—down from almost 28 percent in 2009. 

China’s declining reliance on U.S. soybeans and animal products drove much of the overall decline. In 2023, China bought 25 percent of its imported soybeans from the United States—down significantly from 49 percent in 2000. Over that same period, China reduced its reliance on the United States for meat and animal fat from 57 percent to just 13 percent. China has also seen declining reliance on U.S. dairy products, vegetables and fruits, seafood, and grains.  

However, these trends are not universal. The United States remains a dominant supplier of some goods, such as animal feeds. It supplied 63 percent of China’s total feed imports in 2023.⁵

Brazil has been a major beneficiary of China’s food trade diversification—especially with respect to soybeans. In 2000, China bought about 20 percent of its soybeans from Brazil, but by 2023, that figure stood at 69 percent. That amounts to major business for Brazilian farmers. In 2023, China spent a staggering $41 billion on Brazilian soybeans. Following the U.S. tariffs in 2025, Brazil is likely to take up an even greater portion of China’s grain and meat imports. 

Beyond looking to Brazil, China has sought to leverage its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to enhance its food security. Between the launch of BRI in 2013 and June 2023, China signed over 100 agricultural and fishery agreements with 90 BRI countries. According to ChinaPower estimates, China imported about $82 billion worth of food from the BRI countries in 2023. A significant portion of these imports came from countries within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which provided nearly 17 percent of China’s total food imports in 2023.⁶

While China is diversifying away from the United States—especially in certain products like soybeans—overall diversification of food sourcing is occurring slowly. In 2023, BRI countries provided China with 39 percent of its food imports. That is only up slightly from 35 percent in 2013, when the initiative was started.⁷

It is also worth noting that diversification away from the United States does not address all of Beijing’s food security concerns. While China’s reduced reliance on the United States does mitigate some of the risk of disruptions due to geopolitical tensions, it still leaves China susceptible to other risks, such as natural disasters. In early 2025, for example, excessive rains slowed down Brazil’s soybean harvest. Worsening climate-driven extreme weather could exacerbate such phenomena and cause significant disruptions to China’s supply down the road. 

Strength 2: High Levels of Food Access 

In addition to the availability of food—procured through domestic production and imports—another pillar of food security is “food access.” Food access refers to a population’s access to resources that allow them to meet their nutritional needs. This includes factors like wages, transportation, and proximity to grocery stores. China’s population enjoys a high level of food access, owing to food affordability, robust transportation networks, and large stockpiles. 

Chinese consumers benefit from relatively affordable food in China. China’s per capita income has been rising faster than its food costs, as shown by the growing share of Chinese people who can afford a healthy diet despite increases in food costs. The growth and intense competition within China’s online and digitized supermarket industry have also increased the convenience and affordability of acquiring fresh food. 

China’s robust transportation infrastructure also helps connect food producers with consumers across the country. Like many countries, China’s food producers are concentrated in a handful of regions, and population centers in Eastern China are not self-sufficient in staple grain supply. A great deal of food needs to be transported across the nation. To meet these needs, China relies on its 159,000 km of railway and 128,000 km of domestic waterways (as of 2023), more than any other country besides the United States.⁸

China also maintains large grain stockpiles, reportedly amounting to half of global grain reserves in 2022. This can be inferred from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates, which show China holding massive ending stocks in grains (i.e., the volume of total grain supply subtracted by its consumption volume). For instance, China had nearly five times the level of corn ending stocks as the United States in 2024.  

China’s intensive stockpiling policies provide some cushion against supply and demand shocks, especially in population centers. However, food storage facilities in China were often poorly designed, managed, and maintained in the 2010s, leading to loss and waste. These factors have contributed to the growing cost of stockpiling. According to the OECD, China spent $10 billion on public stockpiling in 2023, about 20 times what all OECD countries spent collectively.  

Strength 3: Heavy Investment in Agricultural Innovation 

Given China’s constrained supply of arable land, its policymakers are leveraging agricultural technology innovation to increase the yield of crops. The 14th Five-Year Plan lays out specific targets for agricultural mechanization and scientific development. Similarly, the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs published a 2025 policy plan that outlines key areas of agricultural innovation, including genetic modification of crops, agricultural robotics, and internet-based tools for farmers.

Beijing’s agricultural modernization drive translates to a boom in ag-tech spending across the country. According to the OECD, China is the world’s top single spender on agricultural innovation, spending about $4.4 billion in 2023. Comparatively, the United States spent $3.8 billion, and the entire European Union spent $7.8 billion in 2023.

Chinese businesses have consistently been the top investors in food and agricultural (agri-food) technology. According to Agfunder, Chinese corporations invested $6 billion in agri-food startups in 2021, and by 2023, China accounted for 41 percent of all agri-food start-up funding in the Asia-Pacific region.

One prominent area of modernization is crop seeds, a major preoccupation for Xi and China’s central leadership. To reduce import dependence for seeds and seed technology, Beijing has ramped up incentives for genetic engineering (which Chinese policymakers have historically avoided). Much of the investment goes toward seed-focused biotech companies like Hangzhou RFGene, whose genetically modified soybeans were recently approved for commercial use in China. These efforts have begun to bear fruit: Chinese state media proudly broadcasts China’s status as the top global producer of seed engineering patents, and 99.9 percent of seeds consumed in China are produced domestically. 

China’s farmers are also revolutionizing the use of agricultural drone technology. Chinese technology entrepreneurs have heralded the “low-altitude economy” (低空经济) as a key driver of domestic growth and an opportunity to seize global leadership. Agriculture is first on the list of industries benefiting from these technologies: one Chinese drone executive noted that China’s drones collectively spend 98 percent of flight time on agriculture-related functions. The growth of China’s agricultural drone industry has rattled policymakers in Washington, but expansion overseas has continued elsewhere at a rapid pace. 

One final locus of agricultural innovation is supply chain analytics. AI investment has poured into the industry, optimizing farm management, delivery networks, food safety monitoring, and strategic stockpile decision-making. One illustrative example is Pinduoduo, a Chinese e-commerce company that has invested billions of dollars in agri-food projects that leverage its e-commerce distribution platform and AI technology. Using cloud technologies, Pinduoduo developed a streamlined, centralized information system that manages dispersed supply chains, processes market information, and conducts sales and customer acquisition—seamlessly linking farmers and consumers from around the country.

Authors:
Brian Hart, Bonny Lin, Hugh Grant-Chapman, Leon Li, Truly Tinsley, Peter Dazheng Huang, Claire Tiunn

The authors would like to thank Caitlin Welsh for her thoughtful feedback on an early draft. Any errors are the authors’ alone.