Origin Agritech Ltd (SEED)

[BlockTrade]

China Plans to become GMO Giant
08.05.2016
At the very highest levels it is now clear that the Chinese regime of President Xi Jinping and his Prime Minister, Li Keqiang, who is also head of the State Council, have decided to make China a world leader in the highly controversial field of Genetically Manipulated Organisms or GMO and the related highly toxic (to humans) pesticides and herbicides. This was made clear in November when the Chinese state ChemChina announced it was seeking to buy the Anglo-Swiss pharmaceutical giant, Syngenta of Basel. This is for me a personal disappointment and for the world, a major blow.

In November, China National Chemical Corporation (ChemChina) made a failed bid to buy the Swiss-based Syngenta, the world’s largest crop chemical pesticide and herbicide producer with 19 percent of the world market. Syngenta is also one of the world’s four giant GMO seed patent holders alongside Monsanto, DuPont and Dow, the “Four Horsemen of the GMO Apocalypse,” as they are sometimes called. The takeover bid is no spur of the moment whim. It comes after Monsanto’s takeover of Syngenta was rejected by the company earlier in 2015. On December 18, ChemChina revealed its seriousness when it made a second larger bid to take Syngenta and all its GMO and pesticide patents and production. The new offer, estimated worth $44 billion, would be the largest corporate takeover in China’s history.

Xi’s Grave Error

In clearly sanctioning the ChemChina bid to become a “global player” in the GMO game of population reduction, Xi Jinping and his Prime Minister and Agriculture Minister are committing a grave error. Taking him at his word, Xi gave a speech last year, made public in May, 2015, in which he declared that China must, “boldly research and innovate, and dominate the high points of GMO techniques.”(emphasis mine-w.e.)

When the Chinese set out to dominate a global market, be it textiles, electronics, or now GMO food and pesticides, we must take that seriously. Xi in that same speech, delivered in late 2014, went on to say, “We cannot let foreign companies dominate the GMO market.” The plan is clearly to use China’s enormous financial resources to buy that foreign competition such as Syngenta.

This year the Chinese government released an agriculture policy paper in which the government called for more GMO research. The Agriculture Ministry began a pro-GMO propaganda campaign in September 2014. Beijing-based Origin Agritech has developed GMO corn seeds, and other Chinese companies are working on new GMO rice varieties. “Biotechnology is our investment for the future,” says Origin Chairman Han Gengchen. He expects the government to allow planting of GMO corn in three years. The official Xinhua News Agency on Feb. 4, wrote, “GMO technology has long been considered an effective way to increase yields on marginal lands.”
http://journal-neo.org/2016/05/08/china-plans-to-become-gmo-giant/