Just what drives China's expansion? Well maybe it is this, with my emphasis:
Unbridled industrialization with almost no environmental regulation has resulted in the toxic contamination of one-fifth of China's farmland, the Communist Party has acknowledged for the first time.

The report, issued by the ministries of Environmental Protection and Land and Resources, says 16.1 percent of the country's soil in general and 19.4 percent of its farmland is polluted with toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, nickel and arsenic. It was based on a soil survey of more than 2.4 million square miles of land across China, spanning a period from April 2005 until December 2013. It excluded special administrative regions Hong Kong and Macau.


In a dire assessment, the report declares: "The overall condition of the Chinese soil allows no optimism."

Link:http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/...s-contaminated


There is a link to an offocial PRC news agency report and The Guardian report.


Might this loss of productive land explain Chinese interest in overseas agricultural land purchase and of course earning foriegn exchange to enter the world food market.