To plan and solve a potential food crisis, it is necessary to know whether the population is going to increase or decrease after 2025. Economic modernization usually meaning liberalization of the society, might lead to the citizens deciding that they don’t agree with the “One child policy” anymore and that they want to have more children. On the other hand the younger population might decide to adopt a new vision on life and therefore decrease the number of children to improve education levels. China’s future population and therefore food security will highly depend on the response of the Chinese population to economic modernization and on a good balance of the two different responses.
There is however a quite a high range of uncertainty in the evaluation of the population since is it only based on behavioural factors, which are hard to predict. Also, since China has such a high population, the smallest change in fertility rate could have a considerable impact on the population. Indeed, recent high and low variants in population projections for China typically differ in the range of 200 million people
As a solution to this problem, an effective family planning is therefore needed to control population growth. An alternative to family planning is to give advantages to families accepting the “one child policy” or not having children at all. Stabilizing population is certainly the most important measure to be taken to ensure food security.
The above discussion leads to the point where it becomes obvious that and increase in population will lead to an increase in demand as well as a decrease in supply (since cultivable land area decreases) for food assuming constant per capital calorie consumption and similar diet preferences. Just like in every country today, the amount of calories per capita daily consumed increases. It is therefore necessary to take this increase into account for the case of China. Not only will population growth affect food demand but also other demographic factors such as age. Indeed, younger people need higher food supplies that older ones. Changes within the population due to economic growth are also to be considered and could have a positive impact on the food demand. China used to rely a lot on agricultural work but because of this increasing economic modernization, more and more people are going to start working in cities and in offices requiring less physical capacities and therefore less food intake.
Not only is population growth a problem linked to food crisis but so are the arable lands and soils. Most of the country is covered by mountains, stony deserts or dry grassland which obviously is inappropriate for agriculture and food production. The only parts of the country that are suitable for agriculture are the South-East, North-East and East as well as some small areas of the far North-West. The information concerning land use in China is not very reliable since the Chinese reports indicate about 95 million hectares. A more realistic estimate of the cultivable area in China has been made and was said to be approximately 130 million hectares. It is however decreasing every year because of urbanization and infrastructure expansion. Some land is also lost due to natural disasters these primarily being floods.
There are two major problems related to the land, available to agriculture. Firstly, the decline of cultivable land. The land loss is permanent. Once the arable land is converted to some kind of infrastructure, it can never be exploited for agriculture again. Secondly, there is a high probability that these losses will increase with further population growth and urbanization. With China's economic development, its infrastructure and especially communication routes will have to be expanded. China still has a huge deficit in transportation infrastructure, and urban growth is only beginning. We consider the losses of cultivated land due to construction activities to be one of the most serious problems for China's food security, because these losses will most likely increase with further economic development.
Strict measures must be implemented and enforced to minimize construction-related losses of cultivated land. China needs concepts for infrastructure development that minimize land use, especially in the rapidly developing coastal provinces. Currently, much cropland is wasted by land-extensive development projects, such as the Three Gorges Dam project.
Secondly, soil degradation is also a considerable issue.
Soil degradation problems do exist in China, particularly the serious water erosion in the Loess Plateau, significant wind erosion in northern China. Ongoing measures ( such as reforestation) to stop or diminish land loss due to water and wind erosion must therefore be intensified, not only to prevent productivity loss in the primary sector, but also to minimize floods.
This impact on productivity hasn’t been too important yet but will certainly Increase if urbanization and growth continues.
What needs to be clarified before any answer can be given is the real sense of the question “Can China feed itself?” There are two different interpretations of the questions these being firstly, can China rely on its own production to feed its population, and secondly, will it need to rely on imports of food to be able to feed itself.
According to all the arguments stated above, it seems impossible for China to control fertility and population growth rates as well as arable land area and therefore to feed itself with its own production The population will keep on increasing and the areas of available agricultural land will keep on decreasing since they are most likely to prefer urbanization meaning profits, to expensive agricultural work. To diminish these problems, an effective family planning program needs to be developed as well as strong environmental policies. According to these two factors, available land and population growth, China is a perfect example of the Malthusian theory.
There is however a lot of other aspects of the questions such as water availability, technology, urbanization, diet etc. that could have been considered and that might have altered the answer to the question.
Work Cited
“Can China Feed Itself?” - IIASA
The World Fact Book
CIA – The world fact book
CIA – The world fact book
Definition of population momentum:
