12/11/2002 (Business Daily Update) - China's soybean imports may rise by athird in the year ending September 2003 as crushing capacity expands,putting pressure on the government to resolve confusion over newgenetically modified crop rules, analysts said. China will import about 14million metric tons of soybeans in the current marketing year, saidRichard Loewy, general manager of Doane Agricultural Services, anagriculture market consultant. China's soybean imports will rise afterthey fell 28 percent in the first 10 months of 2002, Loewy said.This year, imports fell mostly because of confusion about new rules ongenetically modified crops that were implemented on March 20."With crushing capacity up, the importance of the gene-modified rulesissue is going to diminish, and China's going to import beans when itneeds beans," said Loewy.Many State-owned companies are building new crushing plants, which turnsoybeans into soybean oil for cooking and soybean meal for animal feed, inan effort to boost the industry's efficiency to compete with imports ofthese products. China's total crushing capacity will rise 6.7 percent yearon year in 2003 to 160,000 tons a day as companies in the provinces ofGuangdong, Sichuan and Liaoning build plants, said Cao Zhi, an analystwith the China National Grain & Oils Information Center, an arm of thegovernment's State Grain Bureau. That follows a capacity increase of atleast 9 percent this year because of new plants in Northeast China's Jilinand Heilongjiang provinces that started operations in October. The newcrushers include a 3,000 ton-a-day plant owned by Jilin Grain Group Import& Export Co, one of the government's top two grain trading arms. Twoplants in Heilongjiang, owned by the government's Nongken State Farmnetwork, each have capacity of 1,200 tons a day.