China secured another record in grain production in 2025, this one nearly 15 million tons greater than the record it reached in 2024 of over 700 million tons. Thus, China has raised its per-capita grain availability to over 500 kilograms per year, despite “complex global geopolitics and mounting economic pressures” worldwide, China’s Global Times daily wrote proudly in an editorial on Feb. 27.
China starts from the premise that “the people are the foundation of a country; food is the primary need of the people. For a country of more than 1.4 billion people, food security has always been a top priority,” the editorial reminds. That is now the “solid anchor” on which China’s overall development and long-term economic and social stability is secured.
How has China been able to secure the basic food needs of its people—nearly 20% of the world’s population, remember—despite having only 9% of the world’s arable land? “The increase in grain output is not a matter of chance, but the outcome of an agricultural technological transformation,” Global Times answers. “The country has prioritized the development of strategic agricultural science and technology and accelerated breakthroughs in key technologies, with the contribution rate of agricultural technological progress exceeding 64% in 2025. It is these concrete and sustained efforts that enable the Chinese people to say with calm assurance, in the face of any storm: `China’s rice bowl is filled primarily with grains we produce ourselves.’”
This feat has global implications. China is now in a position to help stabilize the global food supply, under threat from “geopolitical conflicts, frequent extreme weather events and persistent supply chain disruptions…. At a time when some countries attempt to weaponize food—using monopolistic trade practices and price manipulation to exert pressure—China’s consecutive bumper harvests carry special strategic weight,” they argue.
With this success, however, comes “responsibility.” China is therefore sharing its agricultural advances with developing countries across the world. The editorial cites the FAO-China South-South Cooperation Program as an example, which provides technical assistance in hybrid rice technology for dozens of countries across Asia, Africa, and the Americas, so that they, too, can replicate China’s success, and free themselves from the big cartels.
As Global Times puts it: “This model of cooperation goes beyond traditional one-way aid, helping developing countries gradually achieve food self-sufficiency and secure their own food supply—without relying entirely on supply chains dominated by multinational grain traders.”
