U.S. Relations With the People's Republic of China (2008)

U.S. Department of State

Remarks at the Peace Corps 2008 Worldwide Country Director Conference

Secretary Condoleezza Rice
Washington, DC
April 28, 2008

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QUESTION: Many of us are in countries where the predominant source of food is grain, rice, et cetera. And I'm wondering about your thoughts about the U.S. Government's thoughts about the skyrocketing prices of grain worldwide.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I'll tell you, we are very concerned about the status of the food situation in the world. The Director of the World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, was actually someone who worked for me as Under Secretary for Economic Affairs. And when Josette says that there is a silent tsunami, I think we really have reason for concern. She's one of the most levelheaded people that I know. And the United States has historically been in the lead as a donor of food aid, at one point being as much as 62 percent of all food assistance. But the exchange rate, plus the -- just the inability to get food to market, or food to people has made it very difficult.

Now, there are, kind of, four causes that we really have to look at and then I'll tell you what I think we need to do in the interim. First of all, we've got to understand better what is happening in some conflict areas in terms of the distribution of food. It's obvious that there are places like Sudan, where we've had a sudden uptick in the inability to distribute food. We thought that in one point, we had done a reasonable job, through bringing -- routes through Libya, of making at least a distribution of food possible. So, I think we need to look at conflict areas and see -- Zimbabwe is another one -- to really see where we have problems of distribution.

Secondly, we obviously have to look at places where production seems to be declining and declining to the point that people are actually putting export caps on the amount of food. Now, some of that is not so much declining production as apparently improvement in the diets of people, for instance, in China and India, and then pressures to keep food inside the country. So, that's another element that we have to look at.

A third element that we have to look at is the incredible cost that fuel prices, everything from fertilizer to transportation costs, is bringing on our ability to distribute or to get food to people. And then associated with that, there has been, apparently, some effect, unintended consequence from the alternative fuels effort. Although we believe that while biofuels continue to be an extremely important piece of the alternative energy picture, obviously, we want to make sure that it's not having an adverse effect. We think that it's not a large part of the problem, but it may, in fact, be a part of the problem, the ethanol debate.

So, there are several pieces here that need to be understood better, but there are certain things that we know can work. One is: The United States needs to be able to locally purchase food. It would considerably drive down our transportation costs, it would considerably help markets in the market for local goods. Right now, we have to buy so much American and transport it that it really does eat away at our food aid dollars. And there is a bill on Capitol Hill that would help us do that. And I've been talking to a number of Congress people about trying to get that pushed forward.

Secondly, we need to look again at some of the issues concerning technology and food production. I know that GMOs are not popular around the world, but there are places that drought-resistant crop should be a part of the answer. And so, we're looking, again, with that.

Third, we need a Doha round, which would -- if we can complete the current round of trade negotiations, which would help to bring down agricultural subsidies by developed countries and give farmers, particularly subsistence farmers, greater access to market, we think this would also help. So, there -- it's a multifaceted problem. Now, we are -- the President has just requested $200 million from the Emerson Trust, it's called, to get emergency food aid in response to the World Food Program appeal. We are looking at what more we might need to do. We obviously want to address the short-term problem, but these other issues that I laid out, we need a broad-ranging and somewhat more integrated approach to make sure that we don't just spend the food aid dollars and continue to face a food crisis down the line.

QUESTION: Madame Secretary, I'm Bonnie Thie, the new incoming Director for Peace Corps China. And I would be interested in your thoughts on the role of Peace Corps in countries that are not the traditional countries where you get your water out of a well.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

QUESTION: If you could comment on that? Thank you.

SECRETARY RICE: Absolutely. Well, the great thing about Peace Corps is I tend to think that you've got, really, four different kinds of countries or different groupings of countries that you help. I remember very much when the Peace Corps went into Hungary when I was here the last time to teach English. And I think even in some, what we would call, middle income, lower middle income countries, there is potential to do programming that's quite specific to a specific goal.

Secondly, there are the recovering countries from conflict. So, Liberia and Rwanda would clearly fit into that category. And that's very heartening, because I'll tell you, when you go to the Rwandan genocide museum and you see what happened to this country just a mere 14 years ago, it's extraordinary that it's a functioning country again. But it obviously is going to need a lot of help to rebuild. And so that's another area in which the Peace Corps could go. Then of course, there are, as you put it, the more traditional places where it's really poverty alleviation in very difficult places.

But then, finally, you've got a country like China which, of course, has resources in the macro sense. It's a country, however, of 1.3 billion people. It will put three -- it has 300 million people going to middle class status. That's the size of the United States. But it has 150 million people who live on less than $2 a day. And that's half the population of the United States. And so working with a country like that to, in effect, begin to make sure that people don't remain marginalized, I think, is extremely important. And the programs that we run in a country like China, I would hope, that we would challenge the Chinese to -- the Chinese or countries of that kind to augment, to be able to make synergies with the kinds of programs that can be run.

The Chinese will tell you -- and I think they're right -- they will tell you if you think China is Beijing and Shanghai, go out to western China and see what life is like in western China. And my guess is you'll run programs in places like that. So, still very important work to be done in developed developing countries, where the income distribution and where their quality of life is erratically different in different parts of the country. But what I would do from my position as Secretary -- you do your work in a place like western China, but what I would do in my work as Secretary is challenge those countries to have policies and to have efforts that are actually evening out their own income distribution and not just continue to rely on, effectively, foreign assistance to do it.

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