President Xi Jinping's visit to northeast China's Jilin Province shows that the country is firmly committed to ensuring grain security amid COVID-19 pandemic and a complex international situation.

For a country with 1.4 billion population, ensuring food security is an unending task for China, and efforts must not be slackened at any time. Northeast China is the country's most crucial commodity grain base, and Jilin is one of the leading corn production areas. Xi's inspection of the province delivered an important message as China strives to finish building a moderately prosperous society in all respects by the end of this year.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, has stressed the importance of food security on many occasions, reiterating that "the rice bowl of the Chinese people, in any situation, must be firmly held in our own hands."

The COVID-19 pandemic has further underlined the importance of grain security. In the first half of the year, China's spring plowing and agricultural production encountered setbacks due to difficulties in transportation, circulation and grain processing.

Restrictions on food exports and panic hoarding in some countries and regions, and rampant desert locust, have adversely affected food production.

"The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2020" report released by five agencies, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), projected that COVID-19 could push up to 132 million people into starvation globally this year.

China has adopted timely measures to respond to emerging challenges. The central authority convened the national work conference on spring plowing in February, one month earlier than usual, to draw this year's roadmap for spring plowing and agricultural production.

When China was hit hard by the coronavirus, the country's top leadership urged all-out efforts to organize spring plowing while taking differentiated anti-epidemic measures, so that farmers don't miss the farming season and a good summer harvest could be guaranteed. Stable grain production has been listed as one of the nation's top priorities as measures conducive to agriculture are adopted across the country.

A bumper harvest is in the offing. China's summer grain output reached a historic high of 142.81 million tonnes this year, up 0.9 percent from last year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The record-breaking harvest has paved the way for another bumper year.

Geopolitical conflicts, coupled with rising protectionism, unilateralism and hegemonism, have made the global situation increasingly complicated, thus posing grave challenges to China's development.

Despite the obstacles, the Chinese people will not flinch, they will deal with their affairs unswervingly. The most pressing issue is to provide food for 1.4 billion people. In the face of volatile and complicated international situations, China's bottom line of safeguarding food security can never be crossed. With this bottom line protected, China's confidence and composure will be boosted enabling it to tide over the internal and external challenges.