China

China has transitioned from rapid growth to high-quality, inclusive, and sustainable development, having eliminated extreme poverty and secured grain self-sufficiency. Despite solid progress in reducing child stunting and wasting, China still faces multiple challenges. Persistent urban-rural disparities affect over 200 million smallholder farmers and remote communities, who are constrained by inadequate infrastructure, market access and financial services. Rural left-behind groups, including preschool-aged children and smallholder farmers, particularly persons with disabilities, confront nutrition and livelihood gaps, while the double burden of obesity and micronutrient deficiency (hidden hunger) keeps growing in rural areas.

Guided by the approach of “for China, with China, and from China”, WFP aligns all interventions with national rural revitalization priorities and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. It strengthens institutional capacity and runs innovative pilots on climate-smart agriculture, agricultural risk management, preschool nutrition improvement and inclusive rural value chains. WFP’s Centre of Excellence for Rural Transformation in Beijing serves as a hub for exchanging knowledge, technical expertise, and practical solutions derived from China’s rural development journey, through South-South Cooperation. WFP China also mobilises innovative public and private partnerships to advance global food and nutrition security for all.

What the World Food Programme is doing in China

Nutrition: In underdeveloped areas of Hunan, Gansu, Sichuan and Guangxi, WFP provides nutritious school meals to preschool children. The programme purchases food from local low income farmers, especially women led households, strengthening home grown school feeding value chains, and delivers nutrition education to promote dietary diversity and healthy eating among children and their caregivers. In Pengshui County, Chongqing, WFP addresses undernutrition and overnutrition by integrating nutritional supplementation, physical activity, and health education to improve the health and nutrition of rural children.
Resilience building: In provinces including Anhui and Gansu, WFP implemented pilot value chain projects that strengthened smallholder farmers’ productivity and resilience through sustainable and climate smart agricultural practices, improved market access and reduced post harvest losses. In Beijing’s Yanqing District, WFP also advanced inclusive rural livelihoods by linking greenhouse production with nutrition services for preschools and community centres, while generating income opportunities for persons with disabilities.
Agricultural risk management: WFP is also exploring innovative, market based solutions to strengthen agricultural risk management in northeast China. In Jilin, WFP introduced the “Insurance + Futures” modality, providing corn-farming households with practical and effective tools for agricultural risk management, and strengthening their resilience to natural disasters. This initiative was recognized at the 2025 World Economic Forum “Summer Davos” for innovation in the food water nexus.
South-South cooperation: In 2016, WFP established the Centre of Excellence for Rural Transformation in Beijing to support South-South Cooperation and knowledge sharing on food security, nutrition, and sustainable agriculture. Leveraging China’s successful experience and applicable technologies, the Centre works closely with partners to facilitate policy dialogue, technical training, expert deployment, policy research, and capacity strengthening. It also implements projects that support resilient food systems and strengthen national capacities in other developing countries. The Centre’s South-South Cooperation Knowledge Sharing Platform and the Cloud School provide access to China’s extensive experiences, proven technical solutions, best practices and policy insights.
Private-public partnerships: With support from the Global Development and South-South Cooperation Fund, WFP partners with the public sector in China to implement food assistance projects in over 39 countries, reaching nearly 11 million people and procuring over 150,000 metric tons of food. WFP also engages private sector partners in China to combine technical assistance, knowledge transfer, and financial resources to address global issues. Through Chinese individual fundraising platforms, WFP raised funds to provide more than 28 million school meals to 2.3 million children in underdeveloped regions, improving nutrition and fostering healthy development.