Food politics in China: How strengthened accountability enhances food security

As the locus of political power, state is widely acknowledged to play an important role in achieving Sustainable Development Goals, particularly in food security. However, the means through which states can harness their power to enhance food security, particularly in developing countries, has yet to be thoroughly explored. This paper addresses this gap by examining the effects of enhanced accountability on food security, and investigating how it can operationalize food security goals into enforceable directives for lower-tier officials, with a focus on China. Utilizing the implementation of the “provincial governor responsibility system for farmland protection and grain production” as a natural experiment and employing a difference-in-difference strategy, we demonstrate that main grain-producing areas (MGPAs), whose governors’ promotion is more tightly linked to food producing, experience a more significant increase in grain sowing areas when compared to other provinces. The results are robust facing a series of robustness checks. Additionally, by considering the dispatch of central inspection team, political cycle, and governor’s tenure as the sources of variations in accountability, we confirm that the key mechanism at play is the accountability inherent in China’s nomenklatura system, rather than alternative economic incentives. The back-of-the-envelope calculation demonstrates the increased grain production caused by strengthened accountability could meet the basic food needs of at least 8.76 million people annually. Our findings highlight that crafting tailored policies based on different political systems to strengthen official accountability is of great significance for better governance of food security.