ARTICLE: "Beijing looks at foreign fields in push to guarantee food supplies: China losing its ability to be self-sufficient," by Jamil Anderlini, Financial Times, 9 May 2008, p. A1.

China replicates its own-the-barrel-in-the-ground mentality it currently displays on oil, believing its risk is expressed in supply when it's really all about price in a truly global market—nothing more, nothing less.

This thinking is even less appropriate in agriculture, but this only confirms China's tendency to think in 19th-century terms, betraying its lack of strategic maturity on too many subjects to name. I know, I know: they think in centuries and all, but we have to stop idealizing those "inscrutable" Chinese. We're talking a lot of leadership that right now doesn't have a clue, networking first and foremost in the worst locales and paying way too much for resources, simply setting themselves up for trouble down the road.

So the latest from Beijing is that they're working to buy up farmland in Africa and South America. Imagine how "secure" those assets are in a local downturn, much less periods of short food supplies.

This is silly, un-strategic thinking, that speaks more to fear than reason, especially as it will put China in competition with its energy suppliers in the Middle East, who are already thinking along similarly unimaginative lines.

China's got 40% of the farmers and 9% of the arable land. But that speaks to emigration, not some land-grabbing strategy that will fool no one and upset many.