Luo Yi is a Chinese pig farmer eking out a living in a decrepit former aluminum parts factory near Khabarovsk, in the Far East of Russia. He is a small part of a smoldering conflict that could prove to be one of the biggest geopolitical problems of the 21st century. The land that Luo is on is part of a vast area that Russia annexed 140 years ago, when China was too busy fighting the Opium …
showed first 75 words of 1124 total

showed last 75 words of 1124 total
…a decade ago; now there are only 83. After peaking at 392 million tons in 1998, China's grain harvests have fallen to 350 million tons a year since then. Within two decades, according to a U.S. government report drawing heavily on classified data, China could need 175 million tons of grain a year, more than the total world grain trade in 2001. No wonder Siberia, remote to so much of the world, looks to Chinese eyes like a convenient granary.