In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Elizabeth Braw sheds some light on an aspect of the situation regarding Ukraine of which I was unaware:
Over the past few years, Chinese buyers have bought farmland in countries ranging from the U.S. and France to Vietnam. In 2013 Hong Kong-based food giant WH Group bought Smithfield, America’s largest pork producer, and more than 146,000 acres of Missouri farmland. In the same year, Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps bought 9% of Ukraine’s famously fertile farmland, equal to 5% of the country’s total territory, with a 50-year lease. (In 2020, the U.S. imposed sanctions on the Chinese company over human-rights abuses.) Between 2011 and 2020, China bought nearly seven million hectares of farmland around the world. Firms from the U.K. bought nearly two million hectares, while U.S. and Japanese firms bought less than a million hectares.
“What matters most is what the Chinese do with the land,†said J. Peter Pham, a longtime Africa analyst who served as the Trump administration’s envoy to Africa’s Great Lakes region. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, “they got approval from the previous regime to take 100,000 hectares to produce for palm oil,†the cultivation of which causes damaging deforestation. “And in Zimbabwe, they’re producing beef for export back to China, which is neither a sustainable nor wise use of farmland in a country where people go hungry for want of basic staples.â€
Nine percent is a lot. In comparison China owns 0.05% of U. S. farmland.
I doubt this aspect figures into Russia’s calculus in the war but it certainly should in the Ukrainian and U. S. post-war planning.
Probably would have been cheaper for Putin to go that route.
I have no doubt Russia is fully aware of China’s landholdings in Ukraine, and will take care not to damage the value of that land. China’s holdings would almost certainly be more secure under Russian rule than under the current Ukrainian regime.
But, note how China handles its huge trade profits. It recycles them into real, tangible assets that yield real long term returns, not useless, and very vulnerable, US treasury notes. While China still has a lot of US notes, it seems to be gradually liquidating them. Every country holding dollars or T-bills should heed the message of the US freezing Russia’s accounts. The US wouldn’t even let Russia make an interest payment on its foreign debt.
PS. The US dollar was as low as 52.48 rubles this morning, but is back up to 54.00 this afternoon. It was below 53 yesterday for a while, too. The strengthening ruble (against the euro and pound, too) is affecting Russian trade. The Russian central bank wants it at 60 to the dollar. The real question is, if sanctions continue will the ruble rise to 50 to the dollar.