China and the new climate deal

“The joint US-China announcement on tackling climate change has been described as "historic", a "turning point" and a "positive signal". It has also been written off as insubstantive or even "hype".
“The reality, perhaps unsurprisingly, lies somewhere in between. What it might represent, however, is a future that pairs economic growth with environmental concerns,” writes STEPS Centre member Sam Geall in a piece entitled What next for China after historic climate deal? published in The Conversation, where you can read the full article.

Earlier this week the President Barack Obama and Xi Jingping announced a deal to reduce their greenhouse gas output, with China agreeing to cap emissions for the first time and the US committing to deep reductions by 2025.

Although there is no formal agreement yet in place, the deal represents a boost to international efforts on reaching a global deal on reducing emissions beyond 2020 at the crunch climate change negotiations in Paris next year.

GM in China: ‘Paranoia’ and public opinion

Photo credit: Maize and sunflower harvest Chahaertan
by dfataustralianaid on Flickr (cc-by-2.0)

Biosafety certificates permitting Chinese researchers to grow genetically modified rice and corn expired last week, with little indication that the Ministry of Agriculture will renew them.

The certificates, issued in 2009, concerned two types of Bt rice, which express a gene of the bacillus thuringiensis bacterium, conferring pest resistance, and phytase maize, which when used as feed can increase the uptake of phosphorus in pigs and chickens, potentially leading to energy savings and more efficient land use. Though not the only homegrown transgenic crops, these projects had attracted particular attention, both for their potential to produce path-breaking examples of Chinese "indigenous innovation", and for the perceived risks of altering such culturally resonant staple crops.

Making sure people have enough food on the table is a political priority in most countries, but it is hard to overstate its importance in China, with one-fifth of the world's population and only 8% of its arable land, and where famine, scarcity and rationing are all-too-recent memories for the leadership. In 2014, for the 11th year in a row, China's first central policy document of the year concerned rural development. For many years, agricultural biotechnology has been a significant government priority: it is, for example, one of seven "Strategic Emerging Industries" in China's latest Five-Year Plan. Furthermore, China has in recent decades seen a massive increase in the production, sale and consumption of meat; phytase maize, in particular, represents an innovation geared towards increasing the efficiency and reducing the environmental costs of this expansion.

So, why were the certificates permitted to lapse before the crops could be commercialised? No clear answer has emerged, but media reports suggest four possible explanations. First, some point to the economics: in the case of Bt rice, Huang Jikun notes that China has nearly reached self-sufficiency in producing rice with conventional varieties, suggesting the ministry decided there was little need to commercialise GM rice in the near future. Second, others chalked it up to "social stability" concerns, with a Greenpeace official telling ScienceInsider that "public concern around safety issues" played an important role. This same campaigner suggested a third explanation, that problems with regulation — "loopholes in assessing and monitoring [GM] research" —underlay the decision, too. Finally, Cong Cao, an associate professor at University of Nottingham, suggested a fourth explanation: simply put, delusions of an ultranationalist variety. For Cao, the U-turn can be blamed on "outrageous" notions — apparently held by some military and other elite figures — that GM food is a "devious plot to annihilate the Chinese", disseminated by an "anti-GM movement whose power and influence are more than matched by its fervour and sheer, undiluted paranoia."

Of course, a fuller explanation might incorporate all four elements and others. In China today, scientific and environmental decision-making is fragmented and far less technocratic than is often assumed, and public and elite anxiety does seem to run high when it comes to genetic modification. But it would be careless to simply write off the situation as reflecting public, or even elite, ignorance and paranoia about food and agriculture.

First, China's anti-GM movement, such as it is, reflects the emergence of a larger public debate than in previous eras on many sides of this controversy. Scientists have also made impassioned public and private appeals to government: last year, a petition to the country's leaders, signed by 61 unnamed government-linked scientists, charged that "the promotion of industrialised cultivation of GM rice can wait no longer, otherwise we will harm the national interest." Recently, pro-transgenics advocates — spearheaded by the commentator Fang Zhouzi, who wrote about phytase maize in 2012 that it was evidence "the clever use of genetic modification will help protect the environment" — staged GM rice-tasting events in 22 Chinese cities.

Second, that public debate around GM food in China resonates with a number of deeper issues. Cao contrasts China and the United Kingdom, suggesting the UK will push ahead with the commercialisation of GM crops, despite it being "fanciful in the extreme" to suggest that China's "regulatory environment is conspicuously slacker" than that of the UK. Yet this seems to overlook quite legitimate public concerns around regulation, risk, trust and the litany of food safety problems China has encountered in recent years. News last month that a major supplier in China sold expired meat to western fast-food outlets followed widely reported cases of contamination by heavy metals, veterinary drugs and food additives, fears about "gutter oil", and most famously the scandal in 2008, when melamine-contaminated baby formula led to the deaths of six infants and sickened hundreds of thousands of children.

For many observers in China, the avoidance of food scarcity is a remarkable, laudable achievement of the Reform Era, but the dominant agricultural development paradigm has come at a cost. In this analysis, the "complex of interrelated problems" that resulted, sometimes known as the sannong problems (affecting nongmin, peasants, nongcun, the countryside, and nongye, agriculture), not only has had implications for food safety, but also has had other effects, such as the widespread overuse of chemical fertilisers and pesticides, soil erosion, the fragmentation of rural communities and rising social inequality. Furthermore, it would be wrong to suggest the UK boasts a pro-GM public consensus (few places do). In fact, opposition to GM foods in the UK stands as a good example of how high-profile failures around food safety, particularly in the management of the BSE crisis, can contribute to a breakdown of public trust in the regulatory system, as well as the difficulty of separating such issues from "political" concerns about ownership and the overall direction of agricultural development.

Finally, another narrative might point to a Chinese public grappling with a great many complex and uncertain problems around food, agriculture and the environment in an innovative and sophisticated fashion. Rather than ignoring or misunderstanding the challenge of producing safe food, citizens are establishing new networks, like Beijing Farmers Market, which connect farmers to consumers and benefit local producers while increasing trust and knowledge about sustainable agricultural practices; journalists have helped consumers to share information about food-safety risks; rural cooperatives have mushroomed across China, often practicing forms of ecological agriculture; innovative producers are laying bare their supply chains by applying social-media technologies; and participatory plant breeding projects have involved farmers and local organisations in improving crop varieties and rural livelihoods.

Certainly, some of the discourse around GM in China is paranoid and misguided, and much like its championing of clean energy, Chinese government support for innovation could perhaps be game changing for agricultural biotechnology. But focusing exclusively on one vision of high-tech innovation — or writing off its critics as purveyors of "anti-science" (when perhaps there are legitimate reasons for concern) — could not only obscure avenues for engagement on scientific and environmental decision-making, but also overlook other, emergent innovations addressing China's agricultural, food and environmental challenges. It's pertinent instead to ask how more open approaches to scientific governance could transform a debate, which – as demand for food and animal feed continues to rise – has surely only just begun.

This article first appeared on the University of Nottingham’s China Policy Institute blog, and is reposted with kind permission.

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About the author: Dr Sam Geall is a Research Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) and a member of the STEPS Centre. He is also Executive Editor of chinadialogue.net

China and Brazil in African Agriculture: news roundup

This news roundup has been collected on behalf of the China and Brazil in African Agriculture (CBAA) project. For regular updates from the project, sign up to the CBAA newsletter.

Brazilian development cooperation increases by 91%
Last week IPEA launched its report on Brazil’s international development cooperation spending in 2010. Brazilian investments in international development cooperation increased by 91% compared to the previous year, totalling R$ 1.6 billion.
(IPEA (pdf))

South Africa overtakes China to become Zimbabwe’s biggest tobacco buyer
South Africa has overtaken China as the biggest buyer of Zimbabwe’s tobacco as of last week. South Africa bought 10,432,871kg worth US$30,882,167,98,  whereas China was in fourth place (after Belgium and the UAE) having purchased 2,585,700kg. The statistics are from the Tobacco Industry and Marketing Board (TIMB). However, China is said to account for 40% of the country’s tobacco output, and exports to the country are expected to peak as the year progresses.
(The Standard)

ProSavana meeting highlights policy objective differences
On 8 August, civil society groups and senior politicians met to discuss the ProSavana project. The National Director of Economy in Mozambique’s Ministry of Agriculture gave a speech contradicting ProSavana’s master plan, leaked several weeks ago, saying that part of its aim was to support smallholder farmers. When challenged on this contradiction, he replied that the government had not been formally shown the master plan and that he was simply expressing the government’s policy on ProSavana. He also agreed with criticisms of the lack of the project’s transparency. The official master plan is due to be released in October. In the meantime, the debate over ProSavana’s attitude towards smallholder farmers is expected to continue
(Mozambique News Reports and Clippings (pdf))

China Special Envoy on Sino-African trade
China Representative on African Affairs, Zhong Jianghua, rejects Nigerian minister’s claims that China is responsible for de-industrialisation, but agrees that African states should see Chinese businesses as competitors. In this interview with the African Research Institute, he also speaks specifically on the importance of agriculture in China’s cooperation with Africa and draws on experiences from when he was Ambassador to South Africa to highlight the challenges involved.
(African Research Institute)


Chinese beef market soars
In response to growing beef consumption, Chinese agribusinesses are expanding overseas in partnerships with foreign beef suppliers. Chongqing Grain Group is one such state-owned business that is looking to invest in Australian cattle. At present, China consumes 5.6 million tons a year, which works out to about 4-5kg per person per year. This is around a fifth of the global average but is set to rise.
(MercoPress)

Brazil’s debt restructuring with Africa benefits trade with Brazilian businesses
Following Dilma Rousseff’s decision to restructure debts with many African partners a few weeks back, this article suggests that Brazilian businesses have already directly benefited from the move. Some countries pardoned, such as Senegal, have spent more on Brazilian products than the value of the debts cancelled.  Defending the controversial decision to pardon so much debt, many Brazilian diplomats were also said to have stressed that it was important to facilitate Brazilian investments in those countries, since they were already being courted by others, especially China.
(Folha de S.Paulo - in Portuguese)

Can Tanzania learn from China’s success story?
This article draws on a point from Chinese Ambassador to Tanzania, Dr. Lu Yongqing, that China was able leverage big companies into fighting poverty in China, and suggests that Tanzania should learn from them. The second part of the article looks at China’s engagements in Tanzania, and says it was there for Tanzania “at a time when richer ‘development partners’ refused to listen.” It looks at how much China is trading with the country but suggests China could do more in terms of helping Tanzania develop value added industries, potentially drawing on the agricultural sector.
(IPPmedia.com)

The China-African Development Fund: a closer look
A new working paper from the Centre for Chinese Studies at Stellenbosch explores the role of the China-African Development Fund (CADFund). Dr. Sven Grimm and Elizabeth Schickerling compare CADFund’s role as a sovereign wealth fund with that offered by Norway (Norfund), and propose that CADFund include African-owned businesses and do more public engagement to be of greater value.
(CCS (pdf))

By Henry Tugendhat

This news roundup has been collected on behalf of the China and Brazil in African Agriculture (CBAA) project. For regular updates from the project, sign up to the CBAA newsletter.

Press Release: Can Chinese innovation help address the climate crisis?

New research project explores lessons for ‘low carbon innovation' from world's biggest polluter

A unique new UK-China project launches today, investigating the social and political drivers and implications of low-carbon innovation in China, the world's largest carbon dioxide emitter by volume, rather than focusing on technical change alone.

To mitigate climate change worldwide we need to transform the way we power our homes, travel and feed the planet's ever-growing population. And nowhere is the approach to innovation across these sectors more crucial than in China, whose decisions on this will impact the rest of the world.

With China throwing state support behind electric vehicles, solar energy and next-generation agricultural technologies, where bottom-up successes in electric two-wheelers, solar thermal and agro-ecological farming have also emerged, now is the time to understand the crucial impact of social and political issues on the successes and failures of low carbon innovations.

The ESRC-funded project 'Low Carbon Innovation in China – Prospects, Politics and Practice' will offer in-depth academic analysis seeking to inform opportunities for low-carbon transitions in China and beyond, with case studies spanning energy, mobility and agriculture.

Dr David Tyfield, Co-Investigator of the project said: “The success or failure of low carbon innovations rests not on how superior the technology is, but on how people use the technology and the issues of power that surround it.

"This project is exploring these crucial social dynamics where they are arguably of greatest significance for global prospects of a 21^st century shift to sustainability: China," Dr Tyfield added.

This new three-year project is an international collaboration between researchers in the UK and at leading institutions in China, led by Professor John Urry at Lancaster University.

Notes to editor:

• Dr David Tyfield, Co-investigator of this project and Co-director of the Centre for Mobilities Research at Lancaster University, is available for interview
• Videos explaining more about the project, and other resources are online: http://steps-centre.org/project/low-carbon-china/
• The research institutions involved are: UK – Lancaster University, University of Sussex, The School of Oriental and African Studies; China – Tsinghua University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy

For more information:
Julia Day, Communications Manager j.day@ids.ac.uk / +44 (0)7974 209148

The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) is the UK’s largest organisation for funding research on economic and social issues. It supports independent, high quality research which has an impact on business, the public sector and the third sector. The ESRC’s total budget for 2012/13 is £205 million. At any one time the ESRC supports over 4,000 researchers and postgraduate students in academic institutions and independent research institutes. More at www.esrc.ac.uk

Download this press release:
Can Chinese innovation help address the climate crisis? (pdf 374kb)

Future Health Systems China launch research project on payment system reform at the county level

On 25 March, the China National Health Development Research Center (CNHDRC) hosted a seminar to mark the launch of an FHS research project examining the impact of payment system reform on the delivery of health care services in rural healthcare facilities in China. The seminar took place in Yubei county, Chongqing city. Over 40 delegates attended the meeting, including a number of local and national government officials and grassroots policy makers.

The meeting was opened by Wang Yuxun, the Deputy Director of the Planning and Finance Department of the Ministry of Health, and Xia Yongpeng, the General Secretary of the Health Bureau in Chongqing. Several county-level officials also participated.

The project leader, Professor Zhang Zhenzhong, gave an overview of the project including an outline of each of the study components, the related outcomes and the framework for delivery. This was followed by two presentations; firstly on the prospect of payment system reform by Professor Jiang Qin and secondly on the application of qualitative research in the project by Professor Zhao Kun. Representatives of each case county then gave an introduction to the public health system in their respective regions and described the process of health reform, with a specific focus on the progress of reform, reform outcomes and the challenges they face. This led to an interesting discussion on the existing problems and potential solutions surrounding the implementation of payment system reform. The grassroots policy makers suggested that the excessive rise in medical expense threatens the security provided by the medical insurance fund. With this in mind it was agreed that each region should take “controlling the excessively fast growth of medical insurance expense” as a major aim of payment system reform.

Local stakeholders and other delegates agreed that the reform and supervision measures will not necessarily lead to a decline in quality of service provision. Neither should expense controls necessarily lead to internal restructuring and medication restrictions. Instead reform offers the potential to improve the value of a service, reduce the unreasonable use of consumable items and to transform the hospital’s compensation mechanism, which has not yet been effectively enhanced. The process of reform also hasn’t addressed a lack of support from health workers for reform and this will be crucial moving forward. This will be addressed in greater detail in our future research. CNHDRC concluded the meeting by agreeing to collaborate further with three case counties: Yubei, Changshu and Hanbin.

It is believed that the research into payment system reform will encourage public health policy makers to reconsider current institutional arrangements around health services delivery and to improve their policy making process. Wang Yuxun fully affirmed the importance of payment reform as part of the national health system reform, citing the current fee-for-service mechanism in hospital, distorted pricing and the excessive costs of examination and medicine in hospital treatment as reasons why reform was so important.