Chinese Economics Thread

vincent

vincent

Grumpy Old Man
Staff member
Moderator - World Affairs
localizer said:
That's where foreign competition/low import tariffs comes in.

The situation right now is horrible. Not only small farms are dying. China has high tariffs and trade restrictions on agriculture due to lobbying.

But if CCP can't even stop lobbying, who can?
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I suggest people who believe China can relies on imported foods should watch 温铁军’s talk on food security. USSR couldn’t even feed its people in the 80’s, which is one of the key cause of its collapse. Also the world food trades are controlled by the West, they can screw China easily.

 
horse

horse

Colonel
Registered Member
localizer said:
The Trade War and resulting record exports have demonstrated to me the resilience of Chinese and entrepreneurs despite 25-50% tariffs.
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The word probably is shrewd, which is more associated with gambling taking risks etc, than the word resilience which is more associated with toughness or perseverance of hard work.

This is what I remember happening.

The tariffs to export to America from China, went to 25% immediately.

What happened next, was the RMB exchange with down around 10%, and Chinese exporters started lowering prices about 5%. (Remember Navarro complaining about it?)

So the effective tariff at that point, was only about 10%.

But it takes time for people to make decisions.

Would have it been a good idea for a major corporation to open a factory in America to save on the tariff of 25%, but really was only 10% compared just a couple of weeks ago in acutal USD.

This was really China saying to the world, okay you mo'fos' you wanna play, let's freakin' play.

The would be competitor would have to think that they could only save that 10% in USD now, but that could change at any time, therefore, not really worth it. It was just better off to pay the tariff.

Once that period of the price exporters adjustment, and the currency adjustment, people adopted to it and got use to it. No one reshored to America with new factories. And the rest is history as they say.

China took its chances. China won their bets.

Of course later, prices readjust again, with the RMB rising lately.
 
C

Chish

Junior Member
Registered Member
localizer said:
But look at the result. All these small farmers are screwed anyways because of poor practices. They're also worsening the antibiotic resistance issue.

I visited the big companies such as Wen Group and Mu Yuan and they're are all earning 2-3x usual profits. Their pigs are locked down as well as Chinese during COVID.

Bird flu still affects a lot of farms and the animal CDC has to go in and raze everything every time it happens. Millions of birds dead at a time and the farmers are compensated poorly by the government.

What if this happens to wheat or rice?
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Every chinese farmer should be given the chance to run his own farms no mater how small. If his farm can survive and be sucessful, whish him well. In Australia, small private farming familes are held in high esteem by city dwellers even if their farm are struggling due to drought , floods, bush fires, covid 19, trade disruptions with China, etc. The trend is towards privately own sustainable, organic farming which commands premium prices for their produces.
 
O

OppositeDay

Senior Member
Registered Member
KYli said:
The government has been forcing small pig farms to become contract farming for big pig farms so that big pig farms can provide the technology know how and infrastructure for small pig farmers. In addition, this method also resolves the issue of many township doesn't want big pig farms nearby but would be more receptive for small pig farms. Of course there are also some downside of this arrangement but you can't have one size fits all strategy for agriculture industry. Government needs to take into consideration of many factors regarding agriculture from food security, employment, environmental impact, inflation, affordability etc.

That's why I disagree that China should implement policies to support big and high tech farming. In addition, every countries support their agriculture industry through handouts and prices support. China shouldn't put its farming industry at disadvantages by not supporting them.

Furthermore, China does have big and high tech farms in certain area such as cotton in Xinjiang, Wheat, rice, and corn in Northeast, potatoes in inner Mongolia. Due to geography, high tech farming isn't suitable for many other places.

I would also argue that result in reliance of the same variety seeds and breeding stocks such as China relied upon European for its high quality breeding stock. One of the reasons why China was vulnerable in expanding its pig herds is due to the need to import breeding herds from other countries. Same thing with birds, China needs to import breeding stocks from the US.

Remember how corporate farming banana got wiped in 1950s due to fungus and now it again facing the same existential crisis. The reason is there is only one variety of banana so when there is a problem the whole industry got affected. So corporate farming isn't as rosy as you might think.
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China should have a heirloom breed publicity campaign. Telling people that the best breed for Chinese dishes are domestic heirloom breeds. Starting from Beijing. Make state banquet uses all domestic breeds.

At the same time, expand offshore aquaculture on an industrial scale. I was talking about this in the Chinese shipbuilding industry thread in the context of China's upcoming Guoxin-1 100,000 tons off-shore fish farming ship. Fish in general has an insane level of feed conversion ratio.
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In term of protein conversion ratio fish is still on par with chicken. Offshore fish farming is just perfect for high-tech industrial scale farming, and there is need to no worry about diseases like bird flu. Also, white protein are usually considered healthier.
 
S

sndef888

Captain
Registered Member
Are the waters of Yellow River, Yangtze clean enough for freshwater fish farms? Could be a huge boon for China's food self sufficiency.

But then there are cargo ships all along the Yangtze, probably wouldn't want marine diesel fish
 
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