Between Global Growth and Domestic Stability: Discursive Contestation in China’s Food Security Governance During the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan

‘Essential self-sufficiency in grain and absolute security in staple food supplies’ has consistently been the defining principle of food security within China's Five-Year Plans. Amidst rising global trade protectionism and heightened supply chain uncertainties, The 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (2021-2025) further emphasises the autonomy and controllability of food security, tightly integrating it with the nation's economic and geopolitical security narratives. This study contends that while China's official ‘food security’ narrative presents highly unified political rhetoric, its governance of food security is shaped by distinct and sometimes divergent logics across state institutions, state-owned enterprises, and local governments. One relevant narrative strand emphasises domestic production control and self-sufficiency, while to some extent safeguarding the interests of smallholder farmers and major production areas. The other strand prioritises achieving supply chain controllability and geopolitical resilience through trade and overseas expansion. As formal channels for public policy debate remain limited, governance divergences seldom surface through institutionalised procedures. Instead, they are articulated through shifts in discursive emphasis, problem definitions, and attribution of responsibility within policy texts and official narratives. To achieve this, we dissect relevant guidance documents and ministerial addresses from various policy departments—including the State Council and relevant central ministries—to deconstruct the unique discourses employed by these actors when confronting external conflicts and the underlying governance logic behind them. This study argues that the tension between global growth and domestic stability, intensified by recent geopolitical shocks, has been strategically incorporated into the discursive construction of China’s food security governance. Within this process, competing strategies centred on domestic production control, agricultural modernisation, and global supply chain dominance have been articulated and reconfigured by state actors. Moving beyond institutionalist perspectives, this study argues that state institutions and political norms alone cannot fully explain differentiated governance logics. Through critical engagement with strategic relations theory and constructivist international political economy, this paper conceptualises food security discourse as a strategic practice. This paper reveals how state actors reconcile inherent tensions within political and economic governance through discursive interpretation, operating within a context of high political centralisation and limited governance transparency.