Malnutrition, Poverty Called Severe in China : U.N. Says 100 Million People Are Unable to Feed, Clothe Themselves

The head of the United Nations’ World Food Program said Wednesday there are still an estimated 100 million people in China unable to feed or clothe themselves.

“China’s per-capita consumption of cereals (grain) is one of the lowest in the world,” James C. Ingram, the program’s executive director, told reporters at the end of a visit here. “. . . China’s consumption of dairy products is the lowest in the world of any significant country.”

Ingram and other World Food Program officials said there is evidence of anemia resulting from inadequate nutrition in many areas of China. However, they said, Chinese relief and food-distribution efforts have been successful in preventing starvation.

The 100 million people living below subsistence levels represent about one-tenth of China’s total population of 1.05 billion.

Within this group, and even allowing for the low cost of some necessities, these poor Chinese simply lack the wherewithal to buy food of sufficient quantity, quality and balance to keep from going hungry. Per-capita income is less than 120 Chinese yuan ($38) per year; per-capita consumption of grain less than 200 kilograms (440 pounds) a year.

Figures Are Relative

This figure does not represent actual food available for each individual, but rather the total amount of grain available to the nation either for food or livestock, divided by the nation’s population. Thus, a relatively low figure reflects a paucity of diet, since many hundreds of pounds of grain are required in the raising of meat animals.

By comparison, Soviet grain figures are higher. The Soviets, who frequently must import much of their grain from the West, have a per-capita consumption of 1,540 pounds a year.

The grain figures supplied to the United Nations by the Chinese government are higher than the ones provided by Ingram. According to this data, per-capita grain consumption in China is 880 pounds a year. However, they include consumption of some materials, such as tubers, that are generally not included in international food calculations. If such items are excluded, the figure for China would be 758 pounds annually.

“Almost every (Chinese) province has pockets of poverty,” Ingram said. The cause of the poverty is that in too many places, the Chinese are “overpopulated on poor land.”

Officials of the World Food Program stressed their belief that China is still in need of international aid, even though its grain output has increased over the last five years to the point where it has cut back sharply on food imports.

“China is self-sufficient (in grain production), but only at a very low level of nutrition,” said Ingram, an Australian.

Some Importing to Continue

During meetings here with Premier Zhao Ziyang and other Chinese officials, Ingram said he was told that China expects to continue importing small amounts of grain, primarily wheat, for the next few years.

With these imports and what China hopes will be increases in its own rice and wheat production, China wants to devote increasing amounts of grain to livestock--thus paving the way for greater consumption of meat and milk.

“The government does not see China becoming a net exporter of cereals,” Ingram said.

In 1984, China’s grain harvest was 407 million tons, the largest in the nation’s history. Last year, grain output dropped off to 380 million tons. It was the first such decline in five years.

This year, the World Food Program expects to deliver about 350,000 tons of food, most of it wheat, to China.

“Of the countries we help, there is none that manages food aid more efficiently and effectively than this country does,” Ingram said.

Deng Backs Family Planning

Meanwhile, in a meeting with former Japanese Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda on Wednesday, Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping emphasized the continuing importance of family planning programs to help eliminate poverty in China.

According to an account of the session by the official New China News Agency, Deng “said that certain people abroad who opposed China’s family planning policy were secretly hoping that China would stay poor forever.” Birth control measures, Deng said, are “helping China to develop more rapidly.”

China’s family-planning program has been repeatedly attacked in the U.S. Congress because of complaints here that abortions have been forced on some women.

Chinese officials insist that there have only been isolated instances of forced abortions and that these cases reflect overzealous local enforcement rather than official government policy. U.S. conservatives also charge that the government has used sterilization as a population-control device.

The United States failed to pledge any new money to the U.N. Fund for Population Activities for 1986 during a pledging conference this past November, substantially a relection of Reagan Administration objections to the more sweeping aspects of Chinese family planning. And it withheld $10 million of its annual payment to the agency to protest the alleged coercive practices.