Magazine: China is a big bite

There are 1.4 billion people living in China, a country that is 102 times bigger than Hungary. China’s GDP is EUR 19.7 billion, bigger than that of the European Union and the USA, and it represents 17.2 percent of the world’s total GDP. In 2015 the level of economic growth was 6.9 percent. Per capita GDP is USD 14,300 – this is the result of a 6-7 percent annual growth. About one third of the 806-million active workforce is employed in agriculture. Industry’s share in employment is 30 percent and 36 percent of the active population earn a living in services. The level of unemployment is hardly 4 percent and China’s budget deficit is only 15.3 percent. China’s trade surplus makes it possible to finance the full debt of the USA’s budget and China is one of the biggest investors on the international stage.

China’s agriculture isn’t only able to feed the whole population, but the country is also an exporter of rice, wheat, corn, peanuts, cotton, apple and oilseeds. Per capita meat consumption used to be 10kg, but between 1985 and 2005 this increased to 50kg, thanks to the dynamic growth of the country’s pig and chicken stock. Half of the world’s pigs are bred in China and this means that the country needs a lot of protein to feed the livestock – no wonder that in the last decade China became the world’s biggest importer of soy. The central element in China’s agricultural strategy is efficiency: because of this they don’t really care about animal welfare rules or the possible effects of gene modification. For instance it is because of GMO rice that the population can be fed even in those parts of the country where there isn’t enough water.

China is a big bite for the Hungarian economy and it is an even bigger one for our agri-food foreign trade. However, in the last three years our agri-food export to China was developing well: in 2014 we exported 2.8 times more than in 2013, and our 2015 export got 2.1 times bigger than it was in the previous year. The driving force behind this export growth was meat sales. Hungary’s positive export trend continued in January-August 2016. In this period we exported EUR 39.5-million worth of meat to China, 72 percent more than in the same period of 2015. It is noteworthy that in China – where 22 percent of the Earth’s population lives – there are more and more people with enough money to generate demand for quality food products too. This creates an opportunity for food exporting countries. In addition to this, at the moment 143 million hectares of land are used for agricultural production in China – this size is 25 times bigger than in Hungary, but let’s not forget that the population that needs to be fed is 134 times bigger.