The Stability–Sustainability Turn in China’s Food Security Evolution

Despite sustained growth in global food production, rising levels of hunger reveal critical shortcomings in conventional food security assessments. In particular, the roles of stability and sustainability in food systems remain insufficiently captured, especially in the context of regional conflicts and pandemic outbreaks. To address this gap, we construct a comprehensive six-dimensional food security evaluation framework that explicitly integrates stability and sustainability alongside availability, access, utilization, and agency. The framework is developed using a consolidated long-term dataset covering all Chinese provinces (108,320 observations, 1990–2019). Our results reveal a fundamental transformation in China’s food security trajectory. This transformation is characterized not only by a substantial increase in the composite food security index (from 36.6 to 73.5), but also by a shift from growth achieved at the expense of stability and sustainability toward a more comprehensive and balanced development pattern. Specifically, stability and sustainability evolved from being major constraints (with a combined negative contribution of −36.6%) to becoming net positive contributors (+3.4%) after 2015. Spatially, this shift has reduced internal imbalances in food security indicators across provinces, while improved alignment between stability, sustainability, and other dimensions has enhanced overall system synergy. Importantly, excluding stability and sustainability results in a 13.6% overestimation of food security levels after 2005. Overall, this study offers a replicable framework for food security evaluation and provides policy-relevant insights for other major agricultural economies confronting similar trade-offs between sustainability and stability.