China set to approve growing genetically modified corn

China is tentatively opening up its lucrative corn market to genetically modified (GM) varieties, according to a manager at a Chinese seed developer cited by Reuters, as Beijing pushes ahead to modernize its seed and biotechnology industry.

The country’s agriculture ministry has mapped out around 4 million mu (660,000 acres), or less than 1% of its corn fields, to be planted with GM corn this year.

The move is “a very practical and likely necessary step by China, despite the small percentage,” Jim Lambert, a veteran exporter of American grain, told The China Project today. “Food security and food production have always been intensely scrutinized and controlled by the Chinese government. I would expect this percentage to grow significantly in the coming years.”

While China has invested heavily into researching gene-edited and GM food crops for decades, it has rarely allowed them to be planted and restricted their import because of biosecurity risks and pervasive public fears about such technologies. (It does, however, allow the imports of GM soybeans and corn, and most recently last month, alfalfa, for use in animal feed.)

“A tiny ‘starter pack’ GMO planting at home signals a surfeit of caution. China hopes it won’t need it, but wants to keep the option open,” Kitty Smyth, head of China-focused U.K. consultancy firm, Jingpinou, told The China Project today. (GMO is an abbreviation for “genetically modified organism.”)

The news comes just a few days after China unveiled its “No. 1 central document” for 2023, in which it outlined nine tasks to promote rural vitalization this year. The No. 1 document is the first government plan released every year and focuses on agriculture. This year it stressed the need to “invigorate its seed industry and strive to make key technological breakthroughs in agriculture.” It also noted that the development of agriculture and rural areas has been “high on the agenda for 20 consecutive years since 2004.”

Too many mouths to feed and too little farmland

Home to 20% of the world’s population, China has 1.4 billion mouths to feed but less than 10% of arable land. The country relies on a hefty amount of imports, particularly for soybeans, to sustain its massive population.

But rising geopolitical tensions and extreme weather events have driven Beijing to double down on food self-sufficiency — and this includes the development of its seed industry. In recent years, Chinese leader Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 has repeatedly said that “Chinese people should hold their rice bowls firmly in their own hands.”

A cautious approach to gene-editing and GMOs

The Chinese government has taken slow but steady steps to regulate biotechnology crops in the past few decades. While China leads the globe in crop gene-editing research with around 75% of the world’s patents, Beijing has remained cautious about commercializing such technologies, blunting the development of its seed industry compared to other countries.

China has not outright banned the planting of GM crops such as rice, corn, or soybeans, but it also has not officially approved them. The only two commercial GM planting licenses that China has granted went to cotton in 1997 and papaya in 2006, but commercial prospects have since stalled.

Although China does allow some GM imports, such as corn and soybeans, for use in animal feed and food processing, no staple GM food crops have been granted a license for commercial planting until now.

Xi wants to “invigorate the seed industry”

In the past few years, however, China has taken small, but significant steps towards the regulation and commercialization of gene-edited or GM crops.

During the annual central rural work conference in December 2022, Xi stressed that “special attention must be paid to farmland and seeds” and to “make real progress in the campaign to invigorate the seed industry, and keep major varieties firmly in our own hands.” Xi also emphasized “the need to rely on science and technology as well as reform to speed up the building of a strong agriculture.”

In January 2022, China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) made a landmark revision on a set of regulations, paving the way for the commercialization of gene-edited and GM crops. The clarified regulations have lit a fire under Chinese companies racing to become leaders in the domestic GM market.

Deep public mistrust

But before China can open up one of the world’s largest agriculture markets to gene-edited or GM seeds, it will have to win over the hearts and minds of a wary Chinese public.

“China doesn’t want GMOs, but in a time of uncertainty, might end up needing it. The Chinese government has signaled that it would like to grow GMOs at home. And the Chinese public has responded negatively,” Smyth told The China Project.

Chinese consumers have long held deep mistrust over the government’s policies on food regulation and the country’s food system as a whole. Although GMOs have become widely accepted around the world in recent years, deep-rooted fears among the Chinese public, particularly within the last decade, have stopped the government from approving GM crops in fear of sparking public anger.

In 2011, authorities even published an article that debunked some of the swirling “fallacies” surrounding gene-edited or GM foods, some of which include:

• Americans do not eat genetically modified agricultural products, but export them to harm the third world.
• Genetically modified food is harmful to health.
• If China promotes genetically modified agriculture, and the seed patents are all in the hands of foreigners, our seeds will be subject to Western giants like Monsanto, which will greatly threaten our country’s food security.
• If China promotes genetically modified agriculture, and the seed patents are all in the hands of foreigners, our seeds will be subject to Western giants like Monsanto, which will greatly threaten our country’s food security.