Among all the reasons
for appealing to popularize GM technologies, economic factor is obviously the
most direct and powerful one.
Source:
Baidu
It
has been a good 20 years for the commercial cultivation of GM crops in China.
Among the past 20 years, Chinese government has gradually made its own choice
on developing GM agricultural technologies. China's principles towards GM
technology—aggressive research, careful popularization and stringent
regulation—is still unchanged, according to Ministry of Agriculture. However,
in the recent three years, China has obviously changed its attitude on the
issue.
The
turning point was when President Xi Jinping delivered his speech on the Rural
Working Conference in 2013. President Xi asked the government to seize the
commanding point of GM technology. However, it has not been revealed until
2014.
According
to the CPC Central Committee's No. 1 document of 2015, "the Chinese government
has to strengthen research on agricultural GM biotechnology, to advance
security management, and to popularize in a scientific way.' While in the No. 1
Document of 2016, it said that the Chinese government has to "strengthen the
research, development, supervision and regulation on the agricultural GM
technology, and then carefully promote the technology on the basis of ensuring
security.' That's to say, the policies on the GM technology have changed.
The
reasons for the changing policies have remained the same. And the No. 1
Document of 2015 has summarized them as "dual squeezing' and "severe test':
"the domestic agricultural production cost has rapidly increased, and the
domestic prices of the bulk farm-products were generally higher than that of
the international market'.
The
No. 1 document of 2016 clarified the reasons in a more specific way: "It's a
major challenge to plan and make use of both the domestic and international
markets so as to improve our agricultural competitiveness and obtain the
initiative of taking part in the international market competition in the
background when the domestic market has been further influenced by the
international agricultural products market.'
China
has been the biggest food importing country all around the globe. The volume of
China's imported soybean is increasing, among which GM soybean accounted for
overwhelming majority. Besides, China also largely imported GM corn and GM
rape. With the development of China's economy, the proportion of vegetable oil
and meat in people's diet structure is going up, so do the three imported GM
foods mentioned above.
As
the imported prices of soybean, corn and rape are lower than the domestic
prices, the domestic corn has faced severe inventory pressure. If the unit cost
of the domestic crop production keeps high, there would be no doubt for
domestic crop to lose its international competitiveness. And among all the
reasons for appealing to popularize GM technologies, economic factor is
obviously the most direct and powerful one.
Just
like what had happened in the Europe and US, China's public also concerns the
security issues on agricultural GM technology. China's anti-GM group has not
offered solid evidences that GM crops are harmful; however, anti-GM group in
China has more audiences than that of Europe and US.
Whether
people accept GM crops doesn't depend on GM technology itself, but depends on how
much people would trust on the proofs and conclusions made by food regulator.
Generally speaking, the higher risks on food security of a country, people are less
likely to accept GM technology; while in an area with better food security
record, people are more likely to accept GM technology.
Considering
that we are living in an era when new technologies occur without interruption,
it is relatively easy to make the decision to accept the agricultural GM
technology. The difficulty lies in wining trust and social consensus, which has
been a challenge for both China and the rest of the world.
*This article is an
edited and translated version by CCM. The original article comes from thepaper.cn.
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