The growth of China, despite Beijing's attempts to blame others, is a major factor in this desperate situation and so China is obliged to take some responsibility and face it constructively. Leadership is needed. It's a shame it's not present.

Food prices have risen by around 60 percent in the last six months worldwide. Rice has increased in price by 68 percent, while wheat and corn prices have more than doubled.

According to the World Bank, 100 million people have been pushed into starvation. The tension is already becoming palpable with food riots erupting worldwide.

The Philippines has introduced a life sentence for stockpiling rice, so severe is the shortage there.

Inevitably, the blame game is on. It's a predictable response in a world so finely balanced across state borders and in a context of competing state policies that fingers will be pointed even as a crisis unfolds and a solution is delayed.

Where's the thought of a solution?

China can, for instance, work to solve the problem directly. The World Food Programme has estimated it is facing a US$500 million (HK$3.9 billion) funding gap, which effectively begins to take effect right now.

This gap means the WFP will have to deny some populations food aid it has already committed to.

This amount is paltry in global terms and represents a sliver of China's annual GDP. China might find ways to raise this money, either by itself or by initiating a global fund which it administers and perhaps underwrites.

But China has to look deeper to find a solution to the food crisis.

For a start, running the line that it's everybody's fault but China's - as Vice Agriculture Minister Niu Dun did recently via the state media, noting that "developed countries should bear the main responsibility" - does not fly.

The food crisis is essentially an outcome of a post-globalization, post- WTO world in which tariff barriers have fallen, welfare safety nets have been abandoned, cash-cropping has been encouraged, trade liberalization has become standard, and largely unregulated financial markets have become bigger and more influential than ever.

All have, in specific ways, contributed to the problem and have undermined the means of solving it.

So, like climate change, this is a group crisis, with responsibility shared by all. All of us in developed countries have benefited from the positives of globalization, and so now, when confronted with its negatives, again like climate change, we are duty bound to ensure we work to alleviate the impact.

China has a special role to play here. As a country still moving its population out of dire poverty, it has a still active "corporate memory" of mass hunger.

Also, China's dualistic approach, so much a source of tension and strain, especially since becoming a member itself of the WTO, may have value.

As a working model, the dual capitalist-welfare state structure China has attempted to manufacture is deeply flawed. But it is mainly undermined by political and bureaucratic weaknesses, many of which may be attributed to human foibles.

Conceptually, the Chinese model has benefits, especially in a discombobulated world now searching for a collective solution to a major crisis.

There is clearly a need to rein in rampant free trade and global liberalization. There is a need to balance the weight of liberal economics with more welfare- conscious, and collective-oriented visions.

There is a need for direct market intervention on the part of global institutions, through the United Nations (including the WFP), the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF for instance. Yet, the free trade world balks at such activism, seeing it as a hindrance to free trade.

China, as an albeit imperfect model for a dualistic system, may indeed have something to add to this debate.

It may even establish a leadership position and move to devise just such a global model, which pays tribute to both the economic and the social factors of life and global affairs. It is a time for leadership, which China can provide. James Rose is editor of www.corporategovernance-asia.com