Achieving Food Security in China The Challenges Ahead Routledge Studies in the Modern World Economy Series

China?s food security has never failed to attract the public?s attention. Feeding China?s large population has always been a huge challenge. The latest large-scale famine took place in 1958?62 during which approximately 37 million people died of starvation. However, since the early 1980s, China?s food availability has improved drastically. The important question is then: has China achieved its food security? Although China?s food availability has significantly improved, it has not achieved a high level of food security due to the lack of progress in several other important dimensions of food security.

The book examines China?s food security practices in the past six decades, explores the root causes that led to food shortages or abundances, and elaborates on the challenges that China has to deal with in order to improve its future food security. China?s quest for food security serves as a valuable lesson for many other countries to learn through China?s experiences and to better manage their food security in the future. The book also draws attention to the fact that China?s food security status has a huge impact on the global community and hence global collaboration is a mutually beneficial approach.

1. Introduction

1.1 Motivation

1.2 A Snapshot

1.3 Objectives

1.4 Key Terms

1.5 Organisation

2. Existing Studies on China’s Food Security

2.1 The Great Famine during 1958-62

2.2 Food Shortages during the Cultural Revolution, 1966-76

2.3 Food Abundance since the 1980s

2.4 Food Security for the Future

Appendix to Chapter 2

3. China’s Food Security Practice in the Past

3.1 Food Scarcity: 1950s-1970s

3.2 Food Abundance: 1980 to Date

3.3 From Scarcity to Abundance: What are the Key Determinants?

3.4 Concluding Comments

4. Current Status of Food Security in China

4.1 Evaluation Framework

4.2 Current Food Security Status: Evaluation by the Oshaug–Eide–Eide Framework

4.3 Current Food Security Status: Evaluation by Other Approaches

4.4 Concluding Comments

5. China’s Quest for Food Security: The Challenges Ahead

5.1 Sustaining Food Production Resources

5.2 Eliminating Unsafe Food and Improving Food Quality

5.3 Narrowing Income Inequalities

5.4 Reducing Food Wastes

5.5 Making Grain Reserve Management Transparent

5.6 Carrying Out Innovative Reforms to the Institutions

5.7 Summing Up

6. China and the Global Food Security

6.1 Will China Starve the World?

6.2 Other Impacts of China on Global Food Security

6.3 How Should the International Community Deal with the Impact of China?

Zhang-Yue Zhou is Professor at the College of Business, Law and Governance, James Cook University.