Chinese Economics Thread
- Thread starter Norfolk
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Guess I am one of those people.
China should have a portion of its food supply relying on other countries. That is the most sensible thing to do.
Go back to the basic idea, what is food? That is a perishable commodity. Therefore, if someone grows it, they will sell it.
However, there can be great fluctuation to the growing season and production. What if there is no rain a drought? Or there is a flood at harvest destroying crops?
Suppose in Russia, the wheat crop destined for China, is destroyed by locusts. Therefore, China cannot rely on foreign supplies of food. Now suppose, the rice crop inside China, suffered from lack of irrigation for whatever reason, lowering yields, leaving not enough rice to eat. Clearly the lesson here is China cannot rely on China to produce all its food needs either.
That is the nature of agriculture. Where is the next flood or drought going to hit? We don't know. Diversify the food supply reaching into different countries is the best thing for China to do.
Remember last year during the pandemic inside China. At that time, there was also the swine flu breaking out, which needed the herd to be destroyed, causing a pork shortage and rising pork prices.
I forget now, but didn't China buy pork from the Americans during the swine flu outbreak last year? I thought they did.
Yeah I believe so. It's surprising though because I think China is against the use of ractopamine which is used in the US.
There is a policy that China should be 90% self sufficient in grains such as wheat or rice. So that only leaves 10% imported.
Plus there is a strategic reserve of grains which should cover 2 years of total consumption
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Immediate success in self sufficiency.
So, due to the above no one seriously considering self sufficiency, the extra grain is not for human consumption, but for pigs.
Targeting to make that as well in China just put unnecessary burden onto the country.
Very easy, forbid the selling of meat products.
Immediate success in self sufficiency.
So, due to the above no one seriously considering self sufficiency, the extra grain is not for human consumption, but for pigs.
Targeting to make that as well in China just put unnecessary burden onto the country.
It is true for the linear extrapolation of economic growth as well : )
Recently, Chinese language news has been discussing the issue of mobile payments in restaurants. A lot of restaurants only take mobile ordering, and they forcibly require you to hand over your phone no., address, etc. People are getting upset and the country is now discussing privacy concerns. People's Daily issued an editorial to warn against the privacy dangers of mobile only ordering etc.
But really this shows privacy is a real concern in China and the state and consumers are working on it. In certain Western countries, you hand over lots of your own data without knowing what goes. Once again the stereotype of China being totalitarian is simply false.
One of the problems is that they are a lot of merchants offering restaurants all kinds of POS interfaces (Point-of-Sale). Some of the cheaper ones harvest customer data, that's why they're so cheap. There needs to be a mechanism to report apps that require you to declare your phone no., etc when ordering a meal.
I can see it being usable as a measure to make trade deals a bit more fair for "partners" and "allies". China can export its high tech products and because China has a need for food they can import food to balance the trade deals a bit.
That is how you win and keep partners and stop them running to the Anglo sphere. Never forgot farmers and industrial leaders have a lot of influence on politicians.