China’s Ministry of Commerce has given the go-ahead for China National Chemical Corp's (ChemChina) planned US$43 billion takeover of global agribusiness Syngenta AG, expected to take place in the second quarter of the year. The takeover, announced on February 2016 and approved by the European Commission and US Federal Trade Commission, is China’s largest foreign acquisition so far, according to UK business-focused newspaper
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After this news broke, 92-year-old former chemical industry minister, Qin Zhongda, together with other groups of concerned people, submitted a letter opposing this takeover to ChemChina and the central government, stating that pesticides and seeds produced by Switzerland-based Syngenta AG would destroy China’s agriculture and food safety.
But Shen Danyang, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Commerce, reiterated that this takeover is just a normal business move like any other international investment or acquisition, and that on April 13, 2016, the Ministry of Agriculture announcement of developing genetically modified products was an important decision taken by the Party Central Committee and the State Council.
Wen Jiayun, a researcher at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China, argued that completely blocking the takeover and naming Syngenta AG a "poisonous company" on account of anti-GM products is simply biased. As the leading agricultural technology company, Syngenta AG is involved in many sophisticated fields such as genomics, bioinformatics, synthetic chemistry, which could bring advanced and innovative agricultural technology to China.
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