China and US agriculture - robbing us blind?

 

In a comment to yesterday's post, "The global food crisis - some people still don't get it", reader "John in Indy" said:

I recently read of a near Western state giving a ChiCom related company money and tax breaks to build a corn to amino acid processing plant that will consume 17 Billion bushels of corn per year, and export the end products. WTF !!!

I'm aware of the incident of which he writes.  It's the Fufeng Group and its activities in Grand Forks, North Dakota.  There's an excellent in-depth study of the situation there in these two articles:

Belt and Road Comes to the Heartland:

The Peculiar Story of Fufeng Group and Grand Forks

Belt and Road Comes to the Heartland (Pt. 2):

More Details Emerge on Fufeng Group

In a nutshell:

The new [amino acid] plant is estimated to consume 25,000,000 bushels of corn for less than one hundred jobs - 250,000 bushels (or 14,000,000 pounds) of American corn per year, per job. Moreover, the Grand Forks City Council and CCP-favorite Governor Burgum are promising to build and subsidize a $150 million natural gas pipeline, and will spend an additional tens of millions of dollars to subsidize construction of Fufeng’s new plant. Fufeng Group will also be offered a “temporary” tax break for years (or decades) to come. Rather than boosting the local economy, the plant will be leeching from it.

One might wonder if Fufeng Group’s founder and chairman, Li Xuechun, shared with the North Dakota luminaries his intention to convert most of the plant’s production to export sales no later than 2025, only a few months after anticipated conclusion of the plant’s buildout? American-made amino acids being sent at the lowest profitable cost possible to feed the swine, beef, and poultry industries of Mexico, Canada, and Brazil, all of whom are much friendlier to China with regard to finished meat exports than the United States is. It’s a canny strategic maneuver, and as is unfortunately typical of our political leadership, the short-term promise of profits, fundraising, and (perhaps) future jobs is a leash with which Chinese companies manipulate their American running dogs.

The bad news continues. Chinese Communist Party personnel overlap with management in Fufeng Group. Founder and Chairman of the Board, Li Xuechun, served as deputy to the Shandong Province 12th People’s Congress starting in 2003 (see page 80) while also being named as the “Model Labour” of the province in the same year. Fufeng itself further exists as a vector of CCP policy. In remarks delivered to the 16th People’s Congress of Qiqihar on 26 December 2017, Mayor Li Yugang emphasized the Party’s role in building and operationalizing Fufeng’s wet corn mill in less than a year, while reinforcing the Party’s commitment to “accelerate” Fufeng’s plans to expand production capacity of amino acids at the plant to consumer more than 3 million metric tons per year of corn. In his annual report issued on 7 January 2020, Mayor Li reiterated that Fufeng is a “national key leading enterprise” in ensuring food security for China.

There's more in both articles linked above.  In a time of worldwide food shortages, it's also worth noting that 25,000,000 bushels of corn could feed an awful lot of people (if the correct varieties were grown).  Americans may not consider corn a primary grain for human consumption, but it is in large parts of Africa.  It's at the same level as rice in Asia.

An even more illuminating article studied China's agricultural industrial espionage in America.

While America Slept, China Stole the Farm

China has breached the inner walls of the U.S. agriculture industry in what has arguably been the most expansive heist in farming history, and is currently attempting to steal or hack every conceivable facet of U.S. agriculture technology.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) openly has declared its intent to dominate high-tech industries across the world, including agriculture, by 2025. Undergirding its technological superiority effort, China has unabashed plans for a solo climb to the top rung of the global power ladder by 2049—international dominion. In order to fuel its ascendance, the CCP is engaged in widespread theft, cyber-hacking, and espionage, with the U.S. as the honey hole of illicit gain.

. . .

Over the past decade, China has appropriated trillions of dollars in sophisticated U.S. technology, with a keen interest in the latest advances in the agriculture industry. In 2013 and 2015, Chinese nationals were nabbed in flagrante delicto by federal authorities, attempting to transport pilfered corn and rice seed to China. However, as the arrests and prosecutions made national headlines, the hard evidence remained ignored. Based on a cursory examination of the CCP’s espionage footprint, the seed thefts are merely emblematic and represent the tip of the iceberg: Beijing is looting the American farm.

There's much more at the link, including details of the incidents mentioned above.  It's likely that China has already obtained samples of all the highly engineered and genetically modified seeds used in US agriculture, and is probably adapting them for its own use.

All three articles are well worth reading.  They're prime examples of how our greatest commercial, industrial and military rival is robbing us blind - and the US government seems to be helpless to stop them.  Considering the amount that the Biden family is alleged to have earned from corrupt business dealings with China, that may not be surprising.

Peter