China's imports of Thai rice or grains is expected to surge in the following weeks after the recent discovery of cadmium metal contamination in the grains marketed by Hunan, China's largest rice-producing province.

Wang Shutong, a commodities analyst, said demand for Thai rice or grains, although expensive as it costs nine times more over the local Chinese grains, was seen climbing.

And should the rice harvest in October continue to be contaminated by cadmium, China may be forced to import more rice grains not only from Thailand, the world's third-largest exporters of the grain, but also from neighboring countries. Cadmium is a carcinogenic metal that can seriously damage the kidneys and cause other health problems.

"This incident highlights the frightening conditions of China's soil and water quality," Mr Wang told Bloomberg News. "The immediate reaction of consumers is to buy rice from places relatively free of pollution, and that points to imports and the country's far-north."

Although its northeast Heilongjiang province, which produces the short-grain japonica variety, rice grains production was relatively cadmium metal-free, analysts suffice this wont be enough to feed the whole rice-consuming nation.

Among the nations expected to benefit include Vietnam, the world's second-largest exporters of the grain, as well as Pakistan. While India is the world's largest rice exporter, concerns over the quality of its grains production is important to China, so the latter may import from there but only limited amounts.

The International Grains Council in April forecast China's rice imports in 2013 to grow by 16 per cent to 2.2 million tonnes due to low selling prices from some neighbors, particularly Vietnam and Pakistan.

Rice wholesalers in China have stopped selling rice from Hunan, buying from elsewhere in China, and even from Vietnam and Pakistan. In fact, rice grains prices from northeast Heilongjiang province has jumped to as much as 2.6 percent in May, according to data Bloomberg gathered from SCI.

Still, long-grain milled rice in China are priced costlier than Vietnam's offers for similar grades, at above $600 a metric tonne versus below $400 a tonne, respectively.

"We are monitoring the developments in China and are ready to supply more rice whenever it is needed," a senior official in Hanoi at Vietnam Northern Food Corp., a state-run rice-exporting company, told WSJ.