Bringing home the bacon

China's grain security is facing a challenge caused by excessive imports of breeding pigs, especially from North America and Europe, to enlarge their herds of swine.

Keen to resolve the problems caused by frequent shortages of pig products and rising pork prices in the 1990s, China began to import breeding pigs in large quantities into the domestic market in 2007. The number of foreign pig breeds has soared every year since.

The country imported 173,000 breeding pigs from the world market in 2013, up 13.8 percent from a year earlier and hit a new record, according to the General Administration of Customs. In the meantime, China also opened a new channel to allow large quantities of British pig semen into China this year.