Last weekend, while social media platforms across China were flooded with posts mourning the death of Yuan Longping, lauded as China’s “father of hybrid rice,” some dissident voices did not escape from the Chinese regime’s clutches. China’s top agricultural expert Yuan, who is praised in state media for developing the world’s first high-yield hybrid rice…

TAIPEI, Taiwan—Yuan Longping, a Chinese scientist who developed higher-yield rice varieties that helped feed China’s people, died Saturday at a hospital in the southern city of Changsha, the Xinhua News agency reported. He was 91. Yuan spent his life researching rice and was nicknamed “Father of Hybrid Rice” by Chinese media. Worldwide, a fifth of…

Yuan Longping, a Chinese scientist who developed higher-yield rice varieties, died Saturday at a hospital in the southern city of Changsha, the Xinhua News agency reported. He was 91. Yuan spent his life researching rice. In the 1970s, Yuan developed a hybrid strain of rice that recorded an annual yield 20 percent higher than existing…