China’s corruption watchdog targets Agriculture Minister Tang Renjian

Tang is the first member of the Communist Party’s current Central Committee to come under investigation for ‘discipline violations’
He has been in the job since late 2020 and started his career in the ministry in the 1980s

Corruption in China

Phoebe Zhangin Shenzhen

Published: 12:21pm, 19 May 2024

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China’s top anti-graft watchdog is investigating the country’s agriculture minister, the latest high-level official to come under scrutiny.

Tang Renjian was “suspected of serious violations of Communist Party discipline and the law, and is currently undergoing disciplinary review and supervisory investigation”, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said on its website on Saturday, without giving details.

Tang’s last public appearance was just three days before the announcement, at a rural talent conference in Xianyang, in the northwest province of Shaanxi where he inspected “innovation in the agricultural industry” and training for farmers.

In April, Tang had hosted a meeting of the party’s Central Leading Group for Inspection Work before the group inspected the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, saying the ministry would “pay great attention to” and respond to each issue the group raised.

According to publicly available information, Tang is the 11th delegate to the party’s national congress in October 2022 and the first member of the 20th Central Committee to be investigated.

Other delegates under investigation are former Beijing deputy mayor Gao Peng, former Bank of China chairman Liu Liange and Cui Maohu, former director of the National Religious Affairs Administration.

Tang, 61, started his political career in the agriculture ministry in the 1980s. He worked in various roles in the sector and moved on to working in provincial governments, including Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region and Gansu province.

In December 2020, he was appointed agriculture minister.

In recent years, China has doubled down efforts on food security, including protection of arable land, expansion of farming acreage and more widespread use of technology, with President Xi Jinping repeatedly stressing that China’s “rice bowl” needs to be firmly kept in the hands of its people.

The seed industry has been deemed “strategic and fundamental”. The country’s Seed Law, which went into effect in March 2022, was implemented to address “choke points” created by a dependence on international imports and a lack of innovation.

The law is designed to maintain the independence and control of the country’s “germplasm resources”, the genetic materials needed for plant cultivation. It covers protection of IP rights in the seed industry, including safeguards for new plant variety rights and compensation for rights infringement.

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Why is the Chinese government so concerned about food security?

Previously, Tang had firmly supported this push. In January 2021, as the newly installed minister, he issued a to-do list to improve the country’s crop production that year, including increasing corn acreage and self-sufficiency in edible soybeans.

The following month, China rolled out its annual blueprint for rural policies amid Covid-19, with an emphasis on using new agricultural technologies.

At the time, Tang called to “raise the safety factor as high as possible, and produce and store as much grain as possible”.