China: Protecting Food Security Amid Land Reform

In a public display of commitment to its roots as a mobilizer of peasant interests, China's Communist Party has once again identified reforming the countryside as its core policy prerogative in 2014. However, for the first time in the past decade, Party leaders have tempered their reform goals with cautionary statements on protecting the nation's food security, reflecting Beijing's deep-seated fear of the unintended consequences of reforming too rapidly.