Is China Preparing for War by Sabotaging America’s Crops?

A.J. Pike

China - There are ominous signs that point to Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping is preparing for some sort of war with the U.S. in his recent efforts to stockpile grains for Chinese consumption, and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) latest attempt of dispatching Chinese nationals in a failed plot to apparently try to sabotage America’s farm products.  

Further evidence suggests that Xi is mobilizing state entities including a Chinese ship-building company that has been converted into a floating farm as part of a “marine bread basket” project that aims to boost the nation’s food security by repurposing old vessels for use in aquaculture. His regime, in the last couple of years, has also begun a nationwide program to cut down forests to increase farmland acreage, which was a direct reversal from their previous policy that had turned farmlands into forests. 

Xi has been urging the Chinese to leave the cities and return to farming, and, in a replay of Mao Zedong’s decade-long Cultural Revolution, he is sending college graduates off to work the soil. 

In most definitions, none of these efforts seem at all ominous, but coupled with a recent thwarted attack by three Chinese nationals who are employed as researchers at Zhejiang University, an institution that is a known collaborator with the People’s Liberation Army, the trio were charged with attempting to smuggle biological agents into the United States for the purpose of trying to poison American food crops by bringing in Fusarium graminearum, a potential agroterrorism weapon that causes “Head Blight,” a fungal disease that hits wheat, barley, maize and rice, and is responsible for billions of dollars in economic loss each year. In humans and livestock, Head Blight causes vomiting, liver damage and reproductive defects. 

“The actions of these Chinese nationals represent the gravest national security concerns,” according to U.S. Attorney Jerome Gorgon, Jr. 

The FBI confiscated samples labeled ‘ARP9’ an actin-related gene that suggests the samples were genetically modified strains of Fusarium graminearum.

“This raises a critical biosafety question,” said Sean Lin from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. “Were these modified strains that were designed to enhance infectivity or pesticide resistance?”  

The fact these Chinese researchers would risk their careers by smuggling a known pathogen is a factor suggesting malign intent, especially given their relations with the Communist Party, of which, at least, one of them is a known CCP member. 

The Chinese attempts to smuggle in pathogens is only the latest incident in a Chinese campaign to compromise and bring down American agriculture. Xi’s regime has been trying to plant invasive species in America for the last several years, beginning in 2020 when farmers in all 50 states received unsolicited seeds from China. 

“The increased measures to safeguard food security by China underscores Beijing’s efforts to prepare for a long trade war with the U.S. along with its  increasingly complex geopolitical challenges,” states Genevieve Donnellon-May of Oxford Global Security. 

It is well-known in political circles that Xi Jinping continues to talk about fighting a war and has been readying both military and civilian society for such a conflict. He also appears to be stockpiling grain in preparation for that war, be it over Taiwan or the Trump Administration’s decision to inject crippling economic tariffs on the Communist regime. 

To wage that war, Xi knows he must be able to feed 1.4 billion people, perhaps while his country is under a wartime embargo. The fact is, China is not food secure. It is the world’s largest food importer. On the other hand, the U.S. only imports 17% of its food supply and that number could be easily decreased in times of war. In the end, despite their recent efforts, analysts agree that China cannot become self-sufficient in feeding itself for at least the next decade. But perhaps Xi’s current strategy of sabotaging American crops is his attempt to try and make sure America is not food secure either.