China becomes the world’s third largest donor of food – Tom Miller

From The Guardian:

After 26 years of receiving food aid, China has emerged as the world’s third largest food donor, according to a report released today by the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP).

China donated 577,000 tonnes of food to more than a dozen countries around the world in 2005, with the great majority sent across the border by rail to North Korea, which relies on food aid to feed its poverty-stricken rural population.

The report’s findings, which track all international food donations, underline China’s growing economic and political clout in Asia, and show how far the country has come since the great famines of the late 1950s killed an estimated 30 million peasants. [Full text]