(TibetanReview.net, May12’26) – China has the biggest world stockpile of food stuffs and fertiliser and should stop building their stockpiles and instead help ease a global supply crisis caused by the Iran war, reported bbc.com May 12, citing former World Bank president David Malpass.
Malpass, who also served as Treasury Under Secretary for International Affairs under US President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2019, was stated to have made the remark while speaking to the World Service’s World Business Report on the eve of the Trump-Xi summit in Beijing.
“They have the biggest world stockpile of food stuffs and of fertiliser,” he has said. “They can stop building their stockpiles.”
His comments have come as nations around the world scrambled to secure fertiliser supplies ahead of spring planting, with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz severely disrupting shipments.
China exacerbated the problem by halting exports of several types of fertiliser since March, citing the need to protect domestic supplies. The country was stated to have accounted for around 25% of global output of fertiliser last year, with exports totalling more than $13bn (£9.6bn).
Malpass, who ran the World Bank from 2019 to 2023, has also said that Beijing’s claim to be a developing nation is no longer credible. “They present themselves as a developing country when they’re the second biggest economy in the world and in many ways rich,” he has said.
“And yet they still have the pretence of being a developing country in the WTO and in the World Bank, and they could suspend that,” Malpass has added.
Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington DC, has rejected Malpass’s assertion, saying, “The root causes behind the current disruptions in global food and fertiliser supply chains are crystal clear; this blame cannot be shifted onto China,”
He has also maintained, “China is universally recognised as the largest developing country – a designation grounded in ample factual evidence.”