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Do you know why more than half of all cooking oils sold on the market are soybean oil? Do you know why more than 80% of soybean oil is genetically modified? Do you know why China, which was an exporter of soybeans until 1995, is now the world's largest importer of soybeans?

If you don't know that's right, and today I'll tell you the full answer. This is a food crisis of global concern and a 20-year-long game between the US and China.

An edible oil crisis that is affecting the world, starting with the defence of soybeans!

China was originally the birthplace of soybeans and has always attached great importance to their production. Until 1995, China was also the world's largest net exporter of soybeans, exporting over 90% of the world's market share.

But the turning point came in 1995, when China's imports of soybeans increased, even to 90 million tonnes in 2017, and China went from being the number one exporter of soybeans to the number one importer. What is this all about?

Kissinger once said that whoever controls the currency controls the global economy; whoever controls the food controls the whole of humanity.

In 1995, the US became unnerved after seeing how much Chinese soybeans were exported worldwide. The US government then increased its subsidies to soybean farmers to the tune of US$11 billion, or more than 20% of the value of soybean production. This is equivalent to the US government subsidizing $20 for every $100 of soybeans sold by soybean farmers. That's not a bad subsidy!

Also, in 2000, an American agricultural company, in northeastern China, discovered that a wild soybean contained a high-yielding shape of gene that contained 16% more oil than ordinary soybean seeds.

What's more, this soybean is genetically so strong in antibodies that it does not require insecticide or weed control. The company then replicated a high-yielding, high-transforming, low-cost soybean seed through gene transfer technology, and has applied for gene patents in over 100 countries worldwide.

Then, to facilitate the popularisation of GM soya, the US went so far as to do a charitable act by distributing free soya seeds to Chinese soya farmers. With high oil yield and no weed control or pest control, who wouldn't want such great seeds?

But what we never expected was that by the time our soybeans were ripe and abundant, the US was saying that Chinese soybean farmers had stolen their technological products and had formed an infringement. We had no choice but to stop growing GM soybeans and replace the original soybean seeds.

However, at this time, American GM soybeans have become a sought-after commodity on the international market due to their high oil yield and low cost. In order to compete with American soybeans, Chinese soybean farmers had no choice but to sell at reduced prices. The result is that the more Chinese soybean farmers plant soybeans, the more they lose, and in the end many of them simply give up planting soybeans.

At this time, the capacity of domestic oil presses is expanding, and it is even better that our soybean farmers are unable to supply soybeans in a timely manner, the key is that the soybean varieties do not have the advantage. Therefore, many oil crushing enterprises are finally only able to ask for soybeans from the United States.

In August 2003, when the US saw that the time was almost right, it used the impact of agricultural weather as a reason to create an international soybean panic. The international price of soybeans then rose from US$2,300 per tonne to US$4,400. Chinese oil crushers took one look at this market and began to panic, eventually signing orders with the US for up to nearly 9 million tonnes of soybeans.

Subsequently, finance capital in the United States began to take control of the soybean market, bringing the price of soybeans back up to $2,000. The plunge in raw materials led to a drop in the price of grain and oil. By this time, many Chinese oil crushing companies finally could not hold up and went into bankruptcy.

At this time, the four major international grain merchants took advantage of the opportunity to buy at low prices, taking a stake in a number of Chinese soybean crushing enterprises, controlling 66% of the country's large oil and grease enterprises at the time, and controlling 85% of production capacity. After foreign investors took control of China's grain and oil enterprises, they bought only foreign genetically modified soybeans, thus forcing Chinese soybean farmers to switch to genetically modified soybeans again.

Having said that, do you see what's going on here? The United States not only controls our grain and oil companies at this time, but also controls the seeds of our soybeans, which in turn opens the valve for our soybean imports.

Let's look at a set of data. 2000 saw China's soybean imports exceed 10 million tonnes for the first time, making it the largest international importer of soybeans. China's external dependence on soybeans rose from about 7% in 1995 to about 48% in 2001. By 2019, China's total soybean imports stood at 88.51 million tonnes, accounting for more than 80% of total food imports.

This time the US has won the battle of the soybean in a big way.

By 2006, the US was back to its old tricks and began to hype the country's staple food crisis, claiming that it would affect hundreds of millions of people. In the following two years the international price of wheat and maize more than tripled. But we need to know that crying wolf once is good enough, crying too much is ineffective.

In December 2007, the state drew on its grain reserves, releasing 5 million tonnes of grain every ten days and a half months to stabilise food prices. Foreign capital then immediately bought in and created a situation where the supply of grain exceeded the demand. But what foreign capital did not expect was that China was throwing more and more grain away, and released news that China still had 100 million tonnes of grain reserves, enough to feed 1.4 billion people for a year.

At this time foreign capital began to panic inside and finally gave up speculating on our staple foods. In July 2008, the war on our staple foods came to an end, and we were able to regain the upper hand.

Subsequently, we seized the opportunity of the 2008 financial crisis, when various futures markets fell wildly, to increase our processing capacity for soybeans and to build a number of large grain silos around the country to stockpile soybeans, even if there was a serious overcapacity. This is because we want to fight a price war and in this way bring down the national price of grain and oil, thus forcing foreign companies, which have no room for profit, to cede dominance of the grain and oil market.

Finally in 2016, after an eight-year-long tug-of-war, foreign control of the oilseed processing industry in China dropped from 85% to 30% and we were able to regain control of the grain and oil market and pull back another round.

At present, China's self-sufficiency rate for rice, wheat and corn is above 97%, and the national grain reserves are sufficient to feed 1.4 billion people for two years. In addition, at this year's conference, the country has also repeatedly stressed the need to vigorously implement soybean and oilseed production capacity enhancement projects to safeguard national food security issues.

As you can see, it is no longer possible for our food to be stuck in the hands of foreigners, as this is the basis for the development of a great nation.