China’s Military Could Be Reaping the Benefits of Takeover of US Ag Giant

America’s largest pork producer was exporting massive quantities of pork to its Chinese “sister company” as it stockpiled food for the Chinese military, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of corporate records and Chinese state-run media reports.

Smithfield Foods, owner of roughly 150,000 acres of U.S. land and operator of dozens of feed mills and production plants, has shipped hundreds of thousands of tons of pork to its China-based parent company WH Group and sister company Shuanghui Investment and Development Co. since being acquired in 2013, according to corporate and Chinese government records as well as state-run media reports.

Shuanghui has extensive ties to the People’s Liberation Army, which it touts on its website, and is responsible for developing food for China’s military to use on the battlefield, according to the PLA-sponsored China Military News.

Shuanghui also operates a food “mobilization center” for the PLA in Henan province, and has done so since 2009, according to a 2022 Shuanghui news release. Shuanghui’s mobilization center stockpiles food, including pork, to meet the PLA’s emergency response needs, and Chinese state-run reports indicate that Shuanghui has distributed food from this stockpile to Chinese soldiers on several occasions in recent years.

A December 2023 report from the Luohe municipal government in Henan province indicates the military stockpile is still active and under Shuanghui’s management.

While Shanghui doesn’t disclose where the pork it supplies the PLA originates from, it’s very likely that at least some U.S. pork product is being supplied to the PLA, according to Brian O’Shea, a former military and intelligence analyst.

“My opinion would be that the Chinese government is giving this superior U.S. pork to their soldiers,” O’Shea told the Daily Caller News Foundation based on his understanding of Smithfield’s central role in Shuanghui’s pork supply chain and Shuanghui’s extensive relationship with the PLA.

“At these mobilization centers, there’s going to be a Smithfield pile and a Chinese domestic pork pile, and the Chinese domestic pork is most likely going to the civilians, whereas the superior pork is going to the Chinese military,” O’Shea said.

Neither Smithfield nor Shuanghui responded to multiple requests for comment.

‘A Unified State’

WH Group acquired Smithfield in 2013 for $7.1 billion. At the time, WH Group Chairman Wan Long said the acquisition would allow his companies to “meet the growing demand in China for pork by importing high-quality meat products from the United States,” adding the merger “provided Smithfield the opportunity to expand its offering of products to China through Shuanghui’s distribution network.”

The Daily Caller News Foundation recently reported that WH Group’s chairman and four other executives are Chinese Communist Party members. WH Group’s chairman and several top executives also hold, or previously held, positions with the Chinese government, the Daily Caller News Foundation found.

WH Group’s leadership includes both Shuanghui and Smithfield executives, according to Reuters.

In 2013, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s annual report characterized Smithfield’s acquisition by WH Group as “part of a broader trend of Chinese global investment in farm assets or food technologies.”

“China’s acquisitions in agriculture and other sectors are being driven by the desire to secure higher volumes of safe products and, in the long term, access to advanced production and processing technologies,” the commission wrote in its report.

“We’ve got to remember that China is a unified state,” Gordon Chang, distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “It operates under the direction of the Communist Party, which demands absolute obedience from all individuals and all entities.”

Since 2013, Smithfield’s exports to China have exponentially increased. Shuanghui constructed a $110 million Smithfield-branded factory in China in 2015 that exclusively processes U.S.-raised Smithfield pork, and the company developed an e-commerce portal in 2017 that sells Smithfield products.

In the wake of these developments, Smithfield’s pork exports to China exploded from roughly 83,000 tons in 2018 to approximately 335,000 tons in 2020, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“There was an unusual increase in sales of entire swine carcasses to China during 2019,” according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service report. “This increase reflects the retooling of at least one U.S. Smithfield Foods plant to produce carcasses for shipment to a plant in China that had excess processing capacity due to the shortage of hogs in the country.”

Shuanghui “used excess capacity in its Chinese plant to make processed products from the carcasses,” the report added.

Between 2015 and 2020, 80% of Shuanghui’s imported meat came from Smithfield, Chinese state-run media outlet The Paper reported. Shuanghui characterized Smithfield as its “primary” pork supplier that same year.

Since then, Smithfield has continued to export hundreds of thousands of tons of pork to China. S&P Global Market Intelligence’s data shows Smithfield sent 242,672 tons of pork to China in 2021 and 124,886 tons in 2022. Smithfield exports to China hit 101,791 tons in 2023, the data shows.

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