Grain circulation needs both strict oversight and the removal of barriers
Under the macro-level deployment of the national food security strategy, we should on the one hand solidly do a good job of "storing ample grain, storing good grain, and storing grain well," and on the other hand, targeting the chronic problems of systems and mechanisms, not only keep innovating our thinking on strengthening management but also step up reform efforts to remove fences and loosen the reins on the market.
It is once again the season for purchasing grain in the new harvest, and a piece of news that "a farmer in Inner Mongolia was sentenced to prison for purchasing corn without a license" has stirred up waves in the grain market. While some public opinion sympathized with the farmer's lack of knowledge of relevant policies and regulations such as "obtaining a license to buy grain," it also raised the question of whether small rural grain traders need administrative licensing, hoping to further break down the administrative monopoly operations that exist to varying degrees in the grain system and make grain circulation smoother.
A specific case of grain buying and selling triggering questions about administrative monopoly in the grain circulation system may seem completely unrelated and a bit of a fuss over a trivial matter, but in fact it reflects from one side society's anxiety about and expectations for further deepening the reform of the grain circulation system.
On the issue of grain circulation, anyone who is a bit older has their own experiences or even unforgettable memories. From the grain coupons issued nationwide starting in 1955 to their final abolition in 1995, this showed that the 40-year system of unified purchase and unified sale of grain had completely ended. From then to now, the history of New China is almost a history of reform and innovation in grain circulation. In this history of grain circulation are engraved many different grain terms, such as unified purchase and unified sale, contract ordering, guaranteed volume with liberalized prices, the governor responsibility system, four separations and one improvement, liberalizing sales areas, protecting production areas, marketization of grain purchase and sale, and so on. Each term represents a period of grain circulation history and represents a line of thinking and a change in grain circulation reform, and the essence of these changes is the regulation and liberalization of the grain circulation system, namely continuously strengthening oversight and continuously removing "fences."
It is precisely because of persisting in reform, persisting in innovation, and persisting in scientific management and the removal of barriers in the grain circulation systems and mechanisms that China's grain circulation pattern has been continuously promoted and changed. Although the course of grain circulation reform has experienced some ups and downs and twists and turns, the direction of reform of the grain circulation systems and mechanisms, constantly moving toward safeguarding national food security and better adapting to economic and social changes, has never changed, and only thus has today's excellent grain situation come about, both safeguarding the "granary under heaven" and promoting fair competition.
However, with the enormous changes in domestic and international economic and social conditions, problems have appeared in the market such as the inversion of domestic and international grain prices, the inversion of grain prices between major production areas and major sales areas, the inversion of prices between finished grain and raw grain, as well as grain inventories remaining stubbornly high and operational systems and mechanisms lacking vitality, making the demand for and pressure of continuing to deepen grain circulation reform seem even more urgent. And judging from the practice of grain circulation reform in recent years, while the grain system, as both practitioner and promoter, has achieved enormous results, there still exist deep-seated problems such as "some deep-seated structural contradictions in the grain circulation system, and the decisive role of the market in allocating grain resources has not been fully brought into play."
These deep-seated problems have long failed to be fundamentally resolved, bringing many negative effects to grain operations. For example, in access licensing for grain operations, although the state encourages market entities under multiple forms of ownership to engage in grain business activities, in specific practice some openly or covertly set conditions act like a glass door restricting other business entities; state-owned grain depots are dominant to the point of being the sole big player, buying grain into storage and sitting back to collect profits, with insufficient initiative and dynamism in destocking, creating a fairly widespread phenomenon of rent-seeking and squeezing out other business entities; and conditions set for grain brokers are too high or unrealistic, and because many "small grain traders" are unable to meet the conditions, this objectively creates phenomena like the "unlicensed grain purchasing" by the farmer in Inner Mongolia.
To summon determination and courage, it is necessary, under the macro-level deployment of the national food security strategy, on the one hand to solidly do a good job of "storing ample grain, storing good grain, and storing grain well," and on the other hand, targeting the chronic problems of systems and mechanisms, not only to keep innovating our thinking on strengthening management but also to step up reform efforts to remove fences and loosen the reins on the market, making full use of the current excellent situation in the grain market, adhering to a problem-oriented approach, pressing ahead with reform and innovation, starting from reforming itself, and daring to act ruthlessly against itself. Only in this way can any difficulty be overcome and new and old problems be solved.