'Land Grabbing' Myth and China-bashing

Chinese aid projects

During the last more than 60 years, over 40 African countries have hosted Chinese agricultural aid projects and more than 90 farms have been developed through Chinese aid.

As of 2009, China had carried out about 200 agricultural projects, and another 20 in the fishing industry.

According to SIANI’s studies, the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) has reported that there are over 1,100 Chinese agricultural experts in Africa, maintaining at least 11 agricultural research stations.

However, contrary to what is claimed, Chinese “land grabs” are not happening in Africa on the scale suggested.

These findings are also supported by research by the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Now that China has become a major global economic power and needs external resources to help its growth engine keep humming, “China bashing” over farmland acquisition has found a receptive audience in many parts of the world.

By the time the World Bank study was released and Land Matrix revised its numbers, the wrong figures had been quoted and re-quoted so extensively that they had been accepted by many scholars and media as truth.

This has unfortunately created an environment of misinformation and mistrust towards foreign farmland investment, mostly by Chinese groups.

Land grabs and their potential implications for food security at local, regional and global levels, as well as economic development and poverty alleviation in the countries concerned, are important issues and need to be studied carefully. This is still not happening.

There is good evidence that emerging economic powers like China and India are setting their own agendas in terms of access to natural resources beyond their own borders to ensure their continued economic growth in the future.

Nevertheless, lack of reliable data, poor research and extensive use of unreliable information have contributed to the current confusion and misinformation surrounding land grabs and their implications for food security, economic development and poverty alleviation.

In the age of ready information, availability does not guarantee accuracy. Land grabs and food security are clear examples. Accusations and assumptions, mostly against and about China, are shaping global public opinion, even though they are often based on flimsy and erroneous data.

More worrying, analyses are still not addressing fundamental issues such as what could be the most appropriate food security-related policies nationally, regionally and globally. Poor scholarship and extensive dissemination of untruths, by negatively shaping global public opinion, can only hamper truly effective initiatives to foster the development of impoverished regions.

Dr Cecilia Tortajada is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Water Policy, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. She authored the case study “Corporate Land Grabs: Policy Implications on Water Management in the South” for the Post-2015 UN MDG Development Agenda.

Source: www.shanghaidaily.com