(A Closer Look at China) Why did Xi Jinping focus on a seed again during his trip to Hainan during the "spring ploughing season"?
China News Agency, Beijing, April 11 (Reporter Liang Xiaohui) During the spring ploughing season, Xi Jinping's eyes once again focused on a seed.
On the afternoon of the 10th, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, President of the State, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, visited the Yazhou Bay Seed Laboratory in Sanya City, Hainan Province.
In the face of new seedlings bred from grain seeds, Xi Jinping pointed out again: "Seeds are the key to my country's food security."
"The grain is the life of the people and the treasure of the country." Xi Jinping once pointed out that a little more grain is a tactical issue, and food security is a strategic issue.
It is now the spring ploughing season in China, and Xi Jinping's special attention to seeds, in the eyes of observers, has profound considerations of tactical and strategic issues.
At present, the international environment is becoming more and more complex, instability and uncertainty are increasing, the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic is far-reaching, and the world has entered a period of turbulence and change.
Especially in recent months, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has severely impacted the global grain trade, and international grain prices have repeatedly hit new highs.
Food security has once again become a dominant topic in the international community.
Think of danger in peace, and manage anxiety and chaos.
For China with a population of 1.4 billion, food security is a big account book related to the national economy and a big strategy for national security. It is not only an economic account, but also a political account and a long-term account. How to serve the Chinese people's own rice bowls It is more secure, and it is the "bigger of the country" that is related to national security.
"Everything is easy, and eating is the biggest thing." "We must not be paralyzed on the issue of food security, and we must not think that when we enter industrialization, the problem of eating is optional, and we should not rely on the international market to solve it." The rice bowls are mainly filled with Chinese grains." In March this year, Xi Jinping raised the question of "who will feed China" when he visited the members of the agricultural sector, social welfare and social security sector who attended the CPPCC meeting.
He stressed, "Who will feed China? China needs to be self-reliant and support itself!"
On the first inspection out of Beijing after the National People's Congress and the National People's Congress, Xi Jinping further pointed out: "Only by holding the Chinese seeds tightly with our own hands can we stabilize China's rice bowl and achieve food security."
With 9% of the world's arable land and 6% of the world's freshwater resources, China feeds nearly one-fifth of the world's population, but the pattern of China's tight grain supply and demand has not changed.
"The people do not eat unless they have grain, and they do not grow unless they have land." There is only so much arable land, how to ensure food security?
A small seed is seen as the key to the key.
"The security of seed sources is related to national security", "Agricultural modernization, seeds are the foundation", "We are determined to fight a turnaround in the seed industry"... In recent years, almost every time Xi Jinping talks about food security, he will mention seed security. The seed had a special weight in his heart.
He once emphasized the problem of seeds, pointing out that "this equipment, this equipment, this condition and that condition, it is difficult to realize agricultural modernization without good seeds!"
In the eyes of observers, behind this, there is a simple truth: the country is not stable without agriculture, and agriculture is the first.
Seeds are the "chips" of agriculture. Whether the seeds are good or not depends on whether the people are full or not.
Therefore, from a longer-term overall perspective, a seed is related to food security, national security, rural revitalization and even national rejuvenation.
How to ensure seed safety?
The fundamental way out is technology.
The Yazhou Bay Seed Laboratory, where Xi Jinping visited this Hainan trip, represents China's efforts to gather all the wisdom and efforts in tackling key problems in the seed industry.
Hainan is the highland of China's seed industry.
Since the 1950s, a large number of agricultural scientific research workers in China, like migratory birds, have entered Hainan every winter and spring to carry out the addition, breeding and seed production of crops, which is called Nanfan.
Yuan Longping, the father of Chinese hybrid rice, has been working here for a long time.
However, as a national breeding base, Nanfan has always had the phenomenon of "small, scattered and weak" in the past. Different scientific research units fought each other independently, and the industrial cluster effect was low. It was difficult to further develop into a seed resource bank and scientific research data valley that served the national strategy.
Xi Jinping is concerned about this issue.
In April 2018, he specially came to the National Nanfan Scientific Research and Breeding Base during his inspection in Hainan, and emphasized that it is necessary to build a "Nanfan Silicon Valley" that integrates scientific research, production, sales, scientific and technological exchanges, and achievement transformation to serve the whole country.
At the end of the year, the construction of Nanfan Science and Technology City began.
In May 2021, the Yazhou Bay Seed Laboratory was unveiled here.
The laboratory coordinates a group of scientific and technological innovation resources such as scientific research academicians and high-tech enterprises, and focuses on tackling major scientific problems in seeds, such as the key technical problems of "stuck neck" such as provenance that need to be solved urgently in China's seed industry.
In recent years, the development of China's seed industry has made great progress, but the foundation for the development of the seed industry is still not solid. It is more urgent than ever to ensure the independent control of seed sources, and the power of science and technology needs to be further exerted.
As the saying goes, a seed can change a world, and a technology can create a miracle.
Xi Jinping's trip once again emphasized that seed sources must be independent and controllable, and seed industry technology must be self-reliant.
This is a strategically important event.
He also mentioned in particular that it is necessary to carry forward the spirit of Yuan Longping and the older generation of scientific and technological workers, sharpen a sword in ten years, and work hard for a long time to do a good job in this major event.
Although the seed is small, it is the "bigger of the country" with strategic significance.
From this event, we can also see the weight of a seed in China.
Once China, through a seed, changed people's lives.
Today's China also hopes to pass another seed, so that 1.4 billion people can eat better and make China's rice bowl more secure.
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