China’s government is not planning to release the country’s massive reserves of grain to provide much-needed relief to Western nations that are bracing for historically high food prices, Chinese local media outlet Xinjiang Daily reported on Friday.
“Some foreign media have recently claimed that the build-up of Chinese grain reserves supposedly ‘portended’ the [Russian-Ukrainian] conflict by causing a rise in prices in the global grain markets, they even called on China to free up 20% of its grain stocks to save the European market.” the newspaper reported, adding that the demands are “absurd and inadequate.”
In December, the US Department of Agriculture estimated that China is expected to have 69% of the globe’s maize reserves in the first half of the crop year 2022, 60% of its rice and 51% of its wheat.