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Genetically modified crops

Gene-policy transfer

China may relax its almost total ban on growing GM food
Apr 23rd 2016 | BEIJING | From the print edition

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. In it he recounted his own experience of hunger during China’s great famine in the early 1960s. He also recalled lean times later that decade during the Cultural Revolution when he went months without “seeing the tiniest drop of oil” or “knowing the taste of meat”. 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”.
追溯中国转基因食品争论的历史，引用官方权威说明转基因食品技术对中国的重要性。

生词与表达:
lean: a lean period is a very difficult time because there is not enough money, business etc
例句: His wife was a source of constant support during the lean years .
hint at: to suggest in an indirect way that sth is true or likely
例句: In his speech the Prime Minister hinted at an early election.
Such instances also hint at the fragility of a globalized world.
yield to: if one thing yields to another, it is replaced by that thing
例句: Beijing’s traditional faded architecture from ancient times has gradually yielded to the modern glass palaces, giving way to a merciless cold concrete urban jungle.
fierce debate: 激烈的争论
例句: There has been a fierce debate on whether parents should get involved into decision-making process of children.
genetically modified (GM) food: 转基因食品
例句: We have no way of knowing where this brave new technology called genetically modified food would take us—an end to food deficit or a beginning of a health crisis.

Twenty years earlier, visiting European scientists had been flabbergasted at how much progress China appeared to be making in this area. Unlike the Europeans, who had 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.
引述历史事实说明二十年前中国对转基因技术的重视

flabbergasted: to shock, awe and bowl over. For something to flabbergast you, it ought to leave you surprising or sputtering in amazement.
例句: What flabbergasted her, however, were the friends and neighbors who traveled there to hear her perform. (Washington Times Dec 5, 2016)
counterpart: 对手方相应的人或物：与另一个具有相同的功能或特点的人或物；
例句: But President Obama is not expected to meet with his Russian counterpart.

Since then, however, Chinese policy had grown much more conservative, for two main reasons. The first is anxiety among some members of the public about the safety of GM foods. The other is a worry that China’s food market might become reliant on foreign GM technology. True, a large share of the soyabeans imported by China are genetically modified. So is the vast majority of the cotton it grows. In 2015 there were more than 6.6m farmers growing GM cotton, and a total of 3.7m hectares of GM crops under cultivation, including cotton and papaya, according to Randy Hautea of the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, an industry group. But the government has been reluctant to approve the growing of GM staples such as maize (corn) and rice.
对比如今中国政策变得保守，分析其背后的两个原因。用调查数据说明中国对国外转基因农作物依赖程度之深

Concerns about China’s growing dependence on food imports (see chart) may be causing policymakers to rethink. This year’s Document Number One, the name given to an annual statement on agriculture that is released by the leadership in January, said for the first time that China would “carefully promote” GM food crops. On April 13th Liao Xiyuan, an official at the agriculture ministry, said China planned to “push forward” commercial cultivation of GM maize over the next five years.
政府想发展转基因技术使国家摆脱对进口食品的依赖

Worries about foreign domination of GM technology may ease if a $43 billion deal reached in February goes ahead for the takeover of Syngenta, a Swiss agricultural firm, by a Chinese company, ChemChina. The acquisition must still be approved by regulators in several countries, but it could give China control of Syngenta’s valuable GM-seed patents.
新的收购使得政府不再那么担心国外公司对于转基因技术的掌控

worries about … may ease if ……: 如果……对于……的担心将会减轻
例句: Worries about online harassment and cyberbullying may ease if people communicate with others, consume news and information and click the mouse with compassion and empathy.

China’s policymakers may be trying to bring belated order to what is already thought to be the widespread, illegal, growing of GM crops. Greenpeace, an NGO, reported in January that 93% of samples taken from maize fields in Liaoning province in the north-east tested positive for genetic modification, as did nearly all the seed samples and maize-based foods it gathered at supermarkets in the area. Anti-GM campaigners in China may be too late in trying to close the barn door.
政府正准备出台政策规范转基因农作物，用数据再次证明其实转基因农作物已经分布得非常广泛了

belated: after the expected or usual time or delayed. Something belated comes after the fact. If you are late to deliver a birthday greeting, then make it a “happy belated birthday” card.

From the print edition: China

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