As the world’s largest developing country and with a population of nearly 1.4 billion, China serves a fundamental and instrumental function in achieving sustainable agricultural development and food and nutritional security for the nation, the region, and the world.

Since resuming its UN membership in 1973, China has maintained close cooperation with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), a specialized agency within the UN system spearheading international efforts to build a world free from hunger and malnutrition, one in which food and agriculture contribute to improving the living standards of all, especially the neediest, in an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable way. In 1982, an FAO Representation Office opened in China soon after the country embarked upon its critical era of “reform and opening-up.”

FAO has consistently advanced, improved and increasingly discharged its functions in the course of its 30-year collaborative journey with China. Throughout China’s process of development, FAO’s cooperation with the country has steadily grown from strength to strength via its contribution of years of experience to the country in devising agricultural policies, supporting planning, drafting effective legislation, and help in developing national strategies to realize rural development and food security goals.

Over the past three decades, FAO has invested approximately US $282 million to support 457 field projects (as of May 2015) in the country through such project modalities as the Technical Cooperation Program (TCP), Government Cooperation Program (GCP), and the Unilateral Trust Fund (UTF) Program. FAO has bestowed specific knowledge and technologies on agriculture, fisheries, livestock, forestry and natural resource management sectors. The organization has helped China both to harness international experience and to pilot its own new approaches to achieving development targets and goals. The projects, encompassing almost all provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country, have generated positive impacts in the field and secured improved livelihoods for millions of farmers.

Acting as an information network among its member nations, FAO collects, compiles, analyzes and disseminates information and data in China. In addition, to share information and knowledge, FAO proactively coordinates with China to both participate in and host high-level international forums, dialogues and events, so as to foster better response and decision-making in line with international agricultural development. FAO has further boosted capacity development at community and institutional levels in the country, while also addressing the needs of China’s engagement within the international tableau.

FAO has in recent years coordinated China’s involvement in standard-setting work through treaties and conventions. In close collaboration with other UN agencies, FAO has helped the nation devise policies and plans to respond to climate change and public emergencies that require global synergy. FAO has also lent China its policy expertise in defining existing priorities and formulating national strategies – such as the Country Program Framework – for enhanced collaboration and aid effectiveness.

During the 1980s and 1990s, FAO’s work in China focused on programs providing assistance in agricultural infrastructure development and provision of advanced technologies. Entering the 21st century, these programs have shifted from a one-way developmental assistance mode to a two-way collaborative method. This signifies that FAO remains proactive in giving technical assistance as regards policy advice and advocacy, norms and standard-setting, trans-boundary animal and plant diseases and pest control, food quality and safety, and sustainable natural resource management. China, meanwhile, is becoming an ever-greater development partner to FAO in promoting South-South Cooperation towards sustainable agricultural development capacity in other developing countries.

Achievements and Experience Sharing

Over three decades of reform and opening-up, China has maintained rapid, steady economic growth to become the second-largest economy in the world today. With the remarkable achievement of successfully producing one-fourth of global food and feeding one-fifth of the global population with less than 10 percent of the world’s arable land, China has led worldwide efforts to achieve Target 1c of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to “Halve, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.” China has thereby amassed invaluable experience to share with other developing countries struggling for food and nutritional security.

China has always been proactive in the South-South Cooperation (SSC) Initiative that FAO launched in 1996 under the framework of the Special Program for Food Security. FAO and recipient countries greatly appreciate and applaud China’s efforts in this regard. Strong commitment by the Chinese government enabled the establishment of an SSC Trust Fund with an initial capital of US $30 million in 2008. In 2014, China contributed an additional US $50 million to the Trust Fund to ensure sustained SSC support for the agriculture, fisheries, forestry and natural resources management sectors of developing countries. To date, through the aegis of FAO, China has assigned more than 1,000 Chinese experts and technicians to Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the South Pacific to provide technical assistance. FAO has moreover designated five Chinese research and training centers as SSC Reference Centers in 2014, so creating for SSC a Sino-FAO knowledge network.

Notwithstanding its rapid rise, China remains a developing country striving for a balanced, low-carbon development pathway that embraces a modernization and industrialization drive that is as equitable as it is environmentally sustainable and climate-friendly. But celebrating our accomplishments of the past three decades does not obscure the fact that China still faces various challenges in maintaining its sustainable agricultural development and food and nutritional security.

Within every challenge, however, opportunity lurks for FAO’s continuous efforts towards improvement. Based on both FAO’s comparative advantages and agricultural development priorities in China, five areas have been identified for cooperation between China and FAO during the 12th Five-Year Plan: (1) improving food security and nutrition; (2) improving the livelihood of the rural indigent populace; (3) enhancing agricultural product quality and safety management capacity; (4) promoting sustainable intensification of agricultural production, ecosystem resilience and agricultural heritage conservation and utilization; and (5) bolstering the capacity for disease and natural disaster prevention and response to climate change. In light of the Country Programming Framework (CPF) to be formulated for implementation during the 13th Five-year Plan, we eagerly anticipate intensifying our already excellent relationship with China and acting in concert to attain ever more successes in the coming years.

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