China Has a Secret Empire in Eastern Europe and South America...And No One Talks About It - Jack Chapple [View all]

This is some farmland in Ukraine. A nation known as the breadbasket of Europe. 10% of the global wheat market, 15% of the global corn market, and 50% of the world’s sunflower oil comes from fields just like this, all over the country. However, a significant portion of these fields are not owned by Ukraine. They are actually owned by China. One prominent example was as to why, is In 2013, Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a Chinese state-owned company, struck a deal to lease 7 and a half million acres of Ukrainian farmland—nearly 9% of all land in Ukraine

Think about that, one Chinese company, owning almost a tenth of the land of another country. essentially becoming the largest landowner and food producer of Ukraine. And this is not just an isolated incident. This is has been happening all over the world for decades. And eventually as I started mapping all of this out, it became apparent, that China has a secret empire, that no one really talks about…

Once upon a time, in a world not yet dominated by smartphones, social media, and 24/7 surveillance, China was busy figuring out how to feed more than a billion mouths. The country was already a global economic powerhouse-in-waiting, but there was a nagging issue: the land situation back home wasn’t exactly what you'd call abundant. With 9% of the world’s arable land and 20% of its population, China was in a bit of a food pickle. The vast landscapes of rolling rice paddies and serene farmland couldn't keep up with an exploding population and a growing middle class with new culinary demands. As the decades passed and China continued to industrialize, urbanize, and devour its own resources, the leadership in Beijing had a eureka moment: Why not just buy the world’s farmland? Problem solved!

Let’s rewind a little to understand how we got here.

In the mid-20th century, China’s land and agricultural strategy was a very domestic affair. After all, the country was dealing with its own tumultuous history of famine and industrialization (thanks, Great Leap Forward). By the 1980s, things started to look better, with the country adopting a series of economic reforms that finally started to fill its grain silos. But even as the country’s agricultural output grew, the alarm bells started ringing in Beijing: Chinese soil, long exploited and degraded, was becoming less productive. Desertification was creeping in. Rivers were running dry. Add to this the rapid urbanization that was gobbling up arable land faster than you can say "ghost city," and the picture was becoming clear—China needed a Plan B.