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After years of fierce debate in China about whether to allow widespread growing of genetically modified (GM) food crops, a strong signal emerged in 2013 that the leadership wanted to push ahead. It was given in a speech on agricultural policy by President Xi Jinping. . . . He said that guaranteeing China’s “food security” was still a serious worry. Hinting at what he saw as a possible remedy, he said China must “occupy the commanding heights of transgenic technology” and not yield that ground to “big foreign firms”.
[Twenty years ago] Europeans, . . . had to beg regulators for permission to experiment with a few hundred square metres of GM plants, their Chinese counterparts were conducting trials across tens of thousands of hectares.