Xi’s comments, on the other hand, came after years of bumper harvests, the eradication of poverty and the growth of a prosperous middle class. They were therefore not widely expected. But with floods affecting most of the country’s rice-production areas and the coronavirus pandemic disrupting food-supply chains, they serve as a reality check. According to Xinhua, Xi described the mainland’s food waste as “shocking ”, and called for long-term measures to stop it.

Since last year, Xi and other top leaders have repeatedly stressed the importance of food security. According to a report in 2018 by the WWF and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, restaurants and canteens alone in China wasted enough food annually to feed up to 50 million people. While rich and high-growth nations may have no current food-supply worries, the world is more conscious of food security and safety amid a global public health crisis and disruption of supply chains by the United States-China trade war. The uncertainty also creates a climate for price rises that could hurt the Chinese economy. There are other background factors that could come to the fore, such as the resumption of a lot of farmland for industrial use and environmental pollution. As a result, farmland in China has become a more valuable and less plentiful asset.