Comprehensively Consolidating the Foundation of Food Security to Ensure That the Chinese People Always Have Control over Their Own Food Supply: An Analysis of Xi Jinping’s Book Entitled National Food Security

Comprehensively Consolidating the Foundation of Food Security to

Ensure That the Chinese People Always Have Control

over Their Own Food Supply:

An Analysis of Xi Jinping’s Book Entitled National Food Security*

Wen Yan

Of the myriad affairs, food is the most crucial. Safeguarding national food security is an eternal task, and the focus on it must never be relaxed. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party Central Committee with General Secretary Xi Jinping at its core has always regarded resolving the food issue for over 1.3 billion people as a top priority in governance. It has implemented the national food security strategy, continuously improved China’s comprehensive grain production capacity, kept the total grain output at the forefront of the world, and effectively guaranteed the food security of more than 1.4 billion people. Xi Jinping’s major statements on national food security have lofty intent, rich connotation, and profound thought, which are an important component of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era. The book entitled National Food Security he recently published collects 240 relevant significant statements by General Secretary Xi Jinping in eight topics.

I. Food Security Is One of the Country's Most Fundamental Interests

“Grain sustains life and is vital to the country.” For a large country like ours with over 1.4 billion people, having grain in hand brings peace of mind, and this is always true. The first special topic of the “Excerpts” focuses on General Secretary Xi Jinping’s far-sightedness and strategic planning on the issue of national food security.

Ensuring food security has always been the top priority for the country and the people’s livelihood. “Of all national policies, ensuring food security is the top priority.” Truly powerful countries without vulnerabilities have the ability to solve their own food problems. Regarding grain production, General Secretary Xi Jinping has always paid great attention and often visited the fields during his grassroots inspections. At the Central Rural Work Conferences in 2013, 2017, 2020, and 2022, as well as during inspections in Hunan and Guangxi, General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized that food security is a strategic issue. As a country with a large population, no matter how high the level of social modernization, solving the food problem has always been the top priority in governance. The food issue cannot be viewed only from an economic perspective, but must be viewed from a political perspective. Ensuring national food security is an important foundation for achieving economic development, social stability, and national security. If there are problems with the supply of major agricultural products such as grains, no one can save us. At one time, ensuring an adequate food supply was our most pressing concern. General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized the importance of remembering history and avoiding “amnesia” regarding food security issues, urging us not to forget the past pains once the wounds have healed. While our country has enjoyed consecutive years of bumper grain harvests, this delicate balance is likely to be a long-term feature of our food security situation due to limited arable land and its potential. The demand for food will continue to rise steadily due to population growth, urbanization, and improved living standards. Over time, this will lead to an increasingly tighter supply-demand balance, compounded by the complex and challenging international situation. Hence, it is crucial to maintain an extremely vigilant stance on food security. We must ensure year-on-year tight control over grain production, with no decrease in acreage or yield, and no disruptions in supply or market stability. Party committees and governments at all levels must steadfastly shoulder the responsibility of ensuring food security, one of the country's most fundamental interests.

The Chinese people must always have control over their own food supply. Fundamentally resolving the issue of ensuring adequate food for the Chinese people based on our national conditions is a consistent major policy. General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly stressed the need to grasp the essence of the food issue, take a strategic perspective, and ensure the Chinese people must always have control over their own food supply and are mainly fed with domestically produced food. This strategic consideration underscores the unreliability of relying on imports for staple foods, which could subject us to external influence. Our starting point is clear: we must not solely rely on purchasing foreign food; instead, our rice bowls must primarily contain domestically produced food. In recent years, the Party Central Committee has introduced a series of policies and measures to support grain production, aiming to ensure that the Chinese people always have control over their own food supply and that grain farmers can profit and enjoy a better quality of life. Despite having only 9% of the world's arable land and 6% of its fresh water resources, our country has successfully fed nearly one-fifth of the world's population. We have progressed from a time when 400 million people suffered from food shortages to today, when over 1.4 billion people enjoy sufficient food. This answers the question of who feeds China and demonstrates our self-reliance—we feed ourselves. Achieving this has been no easy feat, and we must continue to consolidate and build upon this success. Overall, the foundation of our country’s food security remains somewhat shaky, and the situation is still challenging. We can never casually declare that the food issue has been fully resolved. How do we ensure national food security? General Secretary Xi Jinping has stressed that having control over our own food supply and having our rice bowls filled with domestically produced grain is the bottom line. We need to further clarify the focus of food security efforts, allocate resources rationally, and concentrate our efforts on securing the most basic and critical aspects, ensuring basic self-sufficiency in grains and absolute security in staple foods. Increasing grain production capacity remains a top priority. Despite maintaining a high plateau of over 1.3 trillion jin of grain output for eight consecutive years, the challenge will only grow as we move forward. We need to implement a new round of initiatives to increase grain production capacity by hundreds of billions of jin, promptly formulate and execute plans, and fulfill our tasks.

Implementing the national food security strategy allows us to maintain control over the path to national rejuvenation. Food security is a crucial foundation for national security. There can be no stability without agriculture, and chaos arises when grain supply falters. This scenario has played out repeatedly throughout history in China and around the world. A nation can only take the initiative on food security by relying primarily on domestic production, which then enables it to control the overall economic and social development trajectory. Over a long period, the Chinese people have successfully solved the problem of feeding themselves through their own efforts, laying an important foundation for China’s development. As long as there are no major issues with the grain supply, China’s situation remains stable. The ample supply of grain and other key agricultural products has been indispensable in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, fully demonstrating this point. As General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out, agriculture safeguards life security and survival security—it is an extremely important aspect of national security. Only with a strong agricultural foundation and full assurance of food security can we have sufficient confidence and strategic initiative to stabilize the overall situation, respond to changes, and forge new paths forward. Currently, uncertainties and risks are increasing for the global food industry and supply chains. China’s balance between grain supply and demand will remain tight over the long term. We cannot afford any complacency on the issue of food security, thinking that as we industrialize, the issue of feeding our population becomes optional, nor can we rely on the international market to resolve it. If we cannot have firm control over our own food supply, we will be at the mercy of others. We must always keep a keen focus on food security and adhere to a national strategy of self-reliance, with domestic production as the foundation, ensuring production capacity, moderate imports, and technological support. General Secretary Xi has emphasized the need to comprehensively reinforce the foundations of food security, fully implement the Party and government’s joint responsibilities for food security, ensure the red line of 1.8 billion mu of arable land is not crossed, gradually upgrade all permanent basic farmland to high standards, deeply implement the seed revitalization action, strengthen agricultural science, technology and equipment support, and improve the benefit guarantee mechanism for grain growers and the interest compensation mechanism for main grain-producing areas, ensuring that the Chinese people always have control over their own food supply. Only by keeping a firm grip on food security can we maintain control over the path to national rejuvenation.

II. Ensuring food security crucially depends on implementing the food crop production strategy based on farmland management and technology application

General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized that the key to ensuring food security lies in seeds and arable land. This requires us to firmly uphold the red line for arable land, develop high-standard farmland, improve agricultural water conservancy, raise the levels of modern seed industries, agricultural machinery and other technological support, properly delineate and develop grain production functional zones, and truly put into practice  the food crop production strategy based on farmland management and technology application. The second and third topics of the book focus on General Secretary Xi’s important statements on implementing this strategy.

We must resolutely uphold the red line of 1.8 billion mu of arable land and gradually upgrade all permanent basic farmland to high standards. As an ancient statesman said, “Without farming, no food can be produced. And without arable land, no crops can grow.” The bedrock for ensuring national food security is arable land, which is the lifeline of grain production and the foundation for the sustainable development of the Chinese nation. We must protect the arable land that is crucial for the food security of over 1 billion people—we cannot tolerate any failures. General Secretary Xi has repeatedly stressed that we must protect arable land like protecting giant pandas, resolutely defending the 1.8 billion mu red line. We must implement the strictest arable land protection system, take even stronger measures to strictly protect farmland, especially permanent basic farmland, strengthen land use control, regulate the practice of offsetting cultivated land used for nonagricultural purposes, strengthen supervision over land transfer purposes, promote utilization of abandoned land, and resolutely stop any attempts to use cropland for any purpose other than agriculture and specifically grain production. We need to develop national grain security production belts, intensify development of high-standard farmland, improve agricultural water conservancy to increase areas of stable, high-yield farmland resilient to drought and flood, and implement the national black soil conservation program. We must uphold the principle of prioritizing quality land for grain production—premium farmland and soil should be dedicated to grain, orchards and nurseries should be moved to hilly areas where possible, and more vegetable and horticultural production should rely on facility agriculture and factory planting. General Secretary Xi has pointed out that the red line for arable land is not just about quantity, but also quality. In compensating for cultivated land used for non-agricultural purposes, we cannot substitute it with inferior land such as slopes or wasteland—while it might appear balanced on paper, the quality of arable land would be significantly compromised. We must take tough measures, fully holding local Party committees and governments at all levels accountable for protecting arable land. The central government will issue orders on arable land protection to local areas, with strict evaluations and lifelong accountability to ensure the 1.8 billion mu of arable land is authentic and real. We will not tolerate any exceptions or negligence in arable land protection—it is akin to “selling forefather’s land without remorse”! Those who disobey orders, break prohibitions, or neglect their duties will be held fully accountable.

We must strengthen scientific and technological support for agriculture, giving modernization in agriculture the wings of science and technology. China’s modernization cannot be separated from agricultural modernization, and the key to agricultural modernization lies in science, technology, and talent. As the agricultural labor force gradually transfers out, ecological and environmental issues in agriculture become more severe, and society places ever-greater importance on the quality and safety of agricultural products, we must rely more on agricultural scientific and technological progress than ever before to resolve prominent problems such as insufficient arable land resources, water constraints, environmental pressures, impacts of climate change, and an aging agricultural workforce.

General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized that the path forward for agriculture is modernization, and the key to agricultural modernization is scientific and technological progress and innovation. We must proceed from China’s national conditions, follow the laws governing agricultural science and technology, accelerate the pace of innovation, and strive to seize the commanding heights of global agricultural science and technology competition, firmly grasping the initiative in China’s agricultural science and technology development to provide solid scientific and technological support for China’s transformation from an agricultural big country to an agricultural powerhouse. We must uphold self-reliance in agricultural science and technology, spare no effort, and increase investment to build China’s strategic forces in agricultural science and technology, supporting the development of major innovation platforms in the agricultural field, and providing long-term, stable support for agricultural scientific and technological innovation. We should lead in tackling key core agricultural technologies, oriented toward pressing industrial needs, focusing on fundamental technologies, core germplasm resources, key agricultural machinery and equipment, synthetic agrochemicals, soil quality, agricultural water conservation and other areas. We should leverage the advantages of the new framework of pooling nationwide effort and resources for major missions, integrate scientific research resources at all levels and of all types, strengthen enterprises’ position as the principal drivers of technological innovation, and build an agricultural science and technology innovation system with clear stratification, division of labor, collaboration, and appropriate competition. We must work to create new mechanisms and incentives to inspire vitality, focusing on bridging the disconnect between scientific research and production, bringing science and technology directly to villages and households, and truly enabling agriculture to take flight on the wings of science and technology.

General Secretary Xi has stressed that in the New Era, rural areas are fields full of hope and a vast stage for hard work and entrepreneurship. We must cultivate more new types of talent who understand and love agriculture, and strengthen the integration of agriculture and science and technology, persisting in sending talent to rural areas, taking science and technology to the countryside, and serving agriculture, rural areas and farmers—scientific researchers should apply their work on the land, enabling farmers to grow the best crops with the best technologies.

We must thoroughly implement actions to revitalize the seed industry and ensure China’s food security with Chinese seeds. A single seed can change the world, one technology can create a miracle. To guarantee food security, we must firmly grasp seeds in our own hands. China has made evident progress in agricultural science and technology, but there remain weaknesses, and the biggest one is seeds. In recent years, China’s seed industry has made great strides—we can be self-sufficient in rice and wheat varieties—but the overall situation remains grave. After repeated contemplation, General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out one clear imperative: for agricultural modernization, seeds are the foundation. We must bolster our national seed industry, elevate seed security to the strategic level of national security, concentrate efforts to tackle key problems, strengthen weaknesses, reinforce strengths, and control risks, achieving self-reliance and self-sufficiency in seed science and technology and autonomous, controllable germplasm resources. We must accelerate the cultivation of excellent crop varieties with independent intellectual property rights to safeguard national food security from the source. We need to leverage China’s institutional advantages, scientifically allocate superior resources, promote the development of major national innovation platforms in the seed sector, strengthen basic and frontier research, bolster the collection, protection, development and utilization of germplasm resources, and strengthen seed banks. We must deepen reforms of the management system for agricultural science and technology, strengthen enterprises’ position as innovation drivers, improve crop variety approval and intellectual property protection regimes, and propel high-quality development of China’s seed industry with innovation as the core. We must provide long-term, stable support for basic seed breeding research and key breeding projects, tackle bottleneck seed technologies through meticulous selection of breakthroughs, sustained efforts and coordinated initiatives to ensure the seed revitalization action yields tangible results and keeps core crop varieties firmly in our own hands. While biological breeding is the overarching direction, we must also accelerate industrialization. Quality seeds play a crucial role in increasing grain output.

As General Secretary Xi emphasized, agricultural modernization is difficult to achieve without quality seeds, regardless of equipment or conditions! We must start by cultivating outstanding seeds, intensify research into quality seed technologies, and rely on Chinese seeds to ensure China’s food security.

III. Making simultaneous efforts to increase production and reduce losses to strengthen food security capabilities

Ensuring an effective supply of grain and major agricultural products to ensure national food security is the prime task for agricultural development. To guarantee food security, we must work simultaneously on increasing production and reducing losses. The fourth to seventh topics of the book fully reflect General Secretary Xi’s systematic statements on this issue.

We need to establish mechanisms ensuring a stable income for grain growers and provide compensation to major grain-producing areas to incentivize and safeguard the enthusiasm of grain growers and the government for grain production. To stabilize and enhance grain production, profitability for farmers in growing grain must be assured, and major grain-producing areas need incentives to prioritize grain cultivation. As emphasized by General Secretary Xi Jinping, achieving this entails leveraging market mechanisms while bolstering government support and protection, seamlessly integrating the development of grain production with the economic strength of major grain-producing areas. This approach allows farmers to both increase grain production and elevate their incomes concurrently. Concrete measures are necessary to enhance the compensation mechanism for major grain-producing areas, exploring multi-channel compensation methods between production and sales regions, and increasing fiscal rewards and subsidies for major grain-producing provinces and counties. This ensures tangible benefits and development opportunities for counties prioritizing agriculture and grain production. We cannot allow those who produce more grain to suffer economically, and it is crucial to safeguard local governments’ motivation to prioritize grain cultivation. General Secretary Xi stressed that the key to motivating farmers to cultivate grain is enabling them to profit from it. Achieving parallel increases in farmer income alongside enhanced grain production is a top priority. Grain production can only be sustained if farmers find it profitable. Establishing an income guarantee mechanism for grain growers, refining the integrated policy framework covering prices, subsidies, and insurance, and fortifying mechanisms to ensure stable supplies and prices of agricultural inputs are essential to stabilize farmer expectations and mitigate production risks. Innovation in modes of grain production and operation is necessary, extending industry chains to reduce costs and enhance efficiency. Challenges in increasing farmer incomes are prominent in major grain-producing areas and among grain-growing farmers. In policymaking, we must prioritize not only ensuring grain output but also enhancing the profitability of grain production and increasing the incomes of grain growers. Strengthening policy support to benefit agriculture, farmers, and rural areas is vital, exploring the linkage of agricultural subsidies to grain production so that higher grain yields receive more subsidies. Moderately scaled operations should be developed, with a judicious choice between large-scale and small-scale approaches, avoiding one-size-fits-all strategies or coercive orders. Emphasis should be placed on leveraging the driving role of new agricultural operations and cultivating diverse specialized and market-oriented service organizations. In summary, we cannot allow grain growers to suffer economically, nor can we permit major grain-producing counties to suffer fiscally.

Adhering to the all-encompassing approach to food and actively promoting supply-side structural reform in agriculture is essential. People’s food demands are now more diverse, necessitating a change in our perspectives. When General Secretary Xi Jinping worked in Fujian, he advocated for an all-encompassing approach to food. He elaborated on this approach during the annual sessions of the National People’s Congress and National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and at the Central Rural Work Conference in 2022. He emphasized that addressing food security cannot solely focus on limited arable land. Instead, we must adopt an all-encompassing approach, aiming to better meet the people’s needs for a better life by understanding the changing trends in their dietary structures. While ensuring grain supply, it is equally important to guarantee the effective supply of meat, vegetables, fruits, aquatic products, and other types of food. “Eating” involves more than just consuming grains; meat, eggs, dairy, fruits, vegetables, fish, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots are all essential foods. We need to establish a diversified food supply system, expanding from arable land resources to all national resources, and from traditional crops and livestock resources to richer biological resources, while protecting the environment. This includes sourcing food from forests, grasslands, rivers, lakes, and seas, and obtaining calories and protein from plants, animals, and microorganisms. It is necessary to develop food resources through various means and develop a wide range of food varieties to achieve a balance between supply and demand for all types of food. Currently, the food consumption structure of urban and rural residents is continuously upgrading. In the future, ensuring the supply of agricultural products will require maintaining not only quantity but also diversity and quality.

General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that quality equates to efficiency and competitiveness. The principal contradiction in agriculture has shifted from a lack of total quantity to structural issues, characterized by a simultaneous excess supply and insufficient supply of different products. Thus, transitioning from quantity expansion to quality improvement in agriculture is the most urgent task in supply-side structural reform. In which direction should the agricultural structure be adjusted? It should be guided by market supply and demand changes and regional comparative advantages, focusing on products in short supply, high-quality specialty products, and the entire industrial chain from production to marketing. This will expand agriculture’s multifunctionality and value-added space. We must strengthen the core competitiveness of grain, extending the grain industry chain, enhancing the value chain, and building the supply chain. Continuously improving agricultural quality, efficiency, and competitiveness will align food security with modern and efficient agriculture. We must persist in promoting quality agriculture and green agriculture, creating a high-quality supply system to better meet the increasingly diverse food consumption needs of the people.

Effectively managing grain reserves and skillfully utilizing both domestic and international markets and resources is crucial. We must adeptly leverage international and domestic resources and markets, but the ability to ensure the supply of grain and other major agricultural products must be firmly based on our own efforts. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized the importance of properly managing and using reserve grain, as it is essential for securing the people’s food supply. It is unacceptable to claim that the reserves are full in normal times, only to find them unusable when urgently needed. Establishing constant grain reserves is a traditional practice in our country, playing a significant role in market stabilization, disaster preparedness, and supporting farmers. Given China’s vast territory, it is necessary to maintain a higher safety margin by storing slightly more grain and spending a bit more, but cost-effectiveness and efficiency must also be considered. Reforming the grain storage system is essential, increasing the flexibility of the minimum purchase price policies for rice and wheat so that prices better reflect market supply and demand. The government should not bear the entire burden; it must also encourage market participants to actively store grain and effectively utilize social storage facilities. Identifying potential risks in production, processing, distribution, storage, and trade, and enhancing emergency supply capabilities is vital. While ensuring basic self-sufficiency in grain production and absolute security in staple foods, it is necessary to moderately increase imports and accelerate agricultural globalization to alleviate pressure on domestic agricultural resources and the environment and to fill some supply gaps in domestic agricultural products.

First, we must clearly identify which agricultural products' production needs to be protected domestically. Then, we need to determine what, how much, where, and in what manner to import. For grain varieties that domestic production cannot meet or for which resource conservation necessitates imports, it is important to control the stability and initiative of imports, maintain an appropriate proportion, and actively utilize foreign resources.

Expanding the strategic use of international agricultural markets and foreign agricultural resources must be done cautiously, with thorough consideration of economic, technical, and political risks, enhancing our ability to prevent and respond to potential issues. General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that the approach of moderately increasing imports of domestically scarce agricultural products and accelerating agricultural globalization does not signify any change in the fundamental policy of solving the food problem domestically. This must not be misinterpreted as a relaxation of domestic grain production, as such a misunderstanding would have serious consequences.

Promoting the idea that saving and reducing loss is equivalent to increasing production and fostering a culture of food conservation across society is of great importance. The saying “Utilized with restraint, resources will be abundant; otherwise, they will be scarce” underscores this point. Reducing grain loss is a vital method to ensure food security. General Secretary Xi Jinping has highlighted that conserving and reducing food waste can significantly ease supply pressures and reduce resource usage, making it a highly beneficial practice. In China, there is considerable waste in food production, distribution, processing, and consumption, with table waste being particularly alarming. Efforts should focus on reducing waste across the entire food supply chain, deepening various actions to save food, and enforcing strict measures to ensure sustainable and long-term practices. Significant improvements can be made in the consumption stage by stopping “food on the table” waste and promoting the Clean Plate Campaign. Additionally, healthy eating should be encouraged, along with advocating for a simple, moderate, green, and low-carbon lifestyle, opposing extravagance and excessive consumption. General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly instructed to curb food waste, stating that the extent of food waste in the catering industry is shocking and distressing. The culture of waste must be resolutely stopped. Legislation should be strengthened, regulation enhanced, effective measures taken, and a long-term mechanism established. It is essential to reinforce publicity and education, starting from dining tables, university canteens, various unit canteens, the catering industry, kindergartens, nurseries, all levels of schools, and each household. Cultivating the habit of saving should be prioritized, fostering a societal atmosphere where waste is shameful, and saving is honorable.

IV. Fully Implementing the Joint Responsibility of Party and Government for Food Security

Food security and the efforts related to agriculture, rural areas, and rural residents form the foundation of all other endeavors. Party committees and governments at all levels must prioritize and unwaveringly uphold the responsibility of ensuring food security. The eighth topic of the book contains insightful discussions and important directives on this matter.

Party committees and governments at all levels must bear the political responsibility for food security. Ensuring food security is a significant national issue. In the face of risks and challenges, stabilizing agriculture and ensuring the safety of food and key side products become even more critical. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized the need to bear the political responsibility for food security. Grain should not be treated merely as a general commodity, focusing solely on economic calculations without considering political and long-term implications. Both central and local governments share this responsibility. To guarantee national food security, the central government has an unshirkable duty and holds primary responsibility. It should enhance support for grain production through significant water conservancy projects, improving medium and low-yield fields, promoting technological innovation, providing information services, improving market systems, ensuring the safety of agricultural products, and transferring payments to major producing areas. All levels of local governments need to cultivate a sense of the big picture, increase investment in grain production, and consciously assume the responsibility of maintaining national food security. They cannot place the entire burden on the central government. Every province, region, and municipality, regardless of the amount of arable land, must bear responsibility for grain production. Tough measures must be taken to ensure compliance, and those who fail to follow orders, disregard prohibitions, or neglect their duties must be held accountable. Major grain-producing areas, major consumption areas, and areas with balanced production and consumption all share the responsibility to maintain production areas and yield. The responsibility for food security is a collective one, and it must be shouldered together. The requirement for joint responsibility of the Party and government for food security is very clear. The key now is to enforce strict assessments and to urge localities to truly assume their responsibilities.

It is vital to continue the implementation of the “vegetable basket” and “rice bag” responsibility system.

The “vegetable basket,” “rice bag,” and “fruit platter” are all crucial issues related to people’s livelihoods. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that the effectiveness and qualification of local leadership should not be measured solely by GDP or the ability to initiate projects, but rather by whether they follow the Party Central Committee’s requirements. They should fully and accurately implement the new development philosophy, ensure local interests serve the overall interests, and properly handle major tasks like food security entrusted by the Party Central Committee. The joint responsibility of the Party and government for food security must be strictly enforced. The “vegetable basket” and “rice bag” responsibility system should continue to be implemented. We must ensure stable development of grain production, reinforce the responsibility system for provincial governors regarding grain (“rice bag”) and mayors regarding vegetables (“vegetable basket”), and effectively manage the production, distribution, and supply of main and auxiliary food products. This ensures that citizens have sufficient and stable supplies of essential food items and enhances the capacity to secure the supply of grain and important agricultural products. For food security to be effectively guaranteed, both the provincial governor and the Party secretary must be responsible. The “vegetable basket” mayor responsibility system must be truly implemented to ensure the supply of pork, vegetables, and other agricultural products.

It is essential to ensure the safety of food on the people’s tables. Ensuring grain security essentially means ensuring food safety. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that whether we can provide satisfactory food safety to the people is a major test of our governing ability. If our Party cannot ensure food safety, and this remains unresolved for a long time, questions about our competence will inevitably arise. Therefore, food safety issues must be given high priority and addressed with utmost effort. Safe agricultural products and food are both produced and regulated, but ultimately, they are produced. Strengthening source management and improving regulatory systems are essential to putting all efforts into practice. On the basis of ensuring the quantity of agricultural products, even greater efforts should be made to ensure their quality. It is essential to adhere to the most stringent standards, the strictest supervision, the severest penalties, and the most serious accountability to enhance the unity and professionalism of food safety supervision, thereby improving regulatory levels and capabilities. Given the large number of production and business entities and the intertwining of various risks, it is necessary to improve regulatory systems, strengthen regulatory measures, and establish a comprehensive regulatory system that covers the entire process from field to table.

It is vital to implement the primary responsibility of enterprises by guiding them to produce in compliance with the law and clarifying that producers and operators are the first responsible parties for food safety. It is imperative to conduct in-depth food safety governance and rectification, widely promote integrity and law-abiding education, and standardize production and business practices. It is also imperative to maintain a high-pressure stance and rigorously crack down on food safety crimes. For individuals motivated by greed who challenge the moral and ethical boundaries, especially in key areas, critical stages, and major regions, strict measures must be implemented, delivering significant blows without leniency.

Furthermore, strengthening the legal governance of food safety, enhancing grassroots foundation work, establishing a professional team of inspectors, and improving quality and safety levels in the catering industry are crucial steps. Rigorous prevention, management, and control of food safety risks are essential to ensure that people can eat with confidence and peace of mind.

* People’s Daily, July 12, 2023, p. 6.