Retired USDA economist Fred Gale peers through the "dim sums" of puzzling data that don't add up to provide insight about China's agricultural markets in bite-size pieces like Chinese "dim sum" snacks.
Food Safety Video
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A good video from Al Jazeera's China correspondent on some food safety topics that have been covered on this blog -- fake beef made from pork and organic food cooperatives.
Last week's meeting of the standing committee of China's State Council called for relief policies to help beef and dairy farmers who are in financial straits . According to a report on the meeting cattle and sheep farms have seen shrinking profits due to falling prices and rising costs. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) has organized several meetings since August to address dairy and beef issues. An August 21 meeting concluded that the industry faces a dire situation with large losses for farmers and companies due to poor dairy and beef prices and pressure from imports. MARA data indicate that China's beef prices have been on a downward trend over the past two years. The average September 2024 price is down 23 percent since the decline began in January 2023. The current average beef price is about the same as in 2019. Source: Wholesale price data compiled from China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs. China's milk prices have been on a s...
Xi Jinping is the vice president and presumed next president of China but little is known about him. In this post the dimsums blog offers its contribution to the genre of Xi Jinping-ology by conveying Xi's decade-old views on agricultural markets. Ten years ago Xi Jinping wrote a thesis, "Tentative Study of Agricultural Marketization" (中国农村市场化研究) for a Doctor of Law degree at Tsinghua University in Beijing, a top breeding-ground for Chinese officials. The dimsums blogger has spent several hours poring over the 200-plus page tome to see what it reveals about Dr. Xi. The thesis is remarkably close to what China has been doing lately in agricultural policy, suggesting that Xi (or the person who actually wrote the thesis) has a major say in policy or is at least in agreement with what's being done. There is nothing adventurous, controversial (or insightful) in the thesis. It seems to be the work of a wonkish technocrat who is not prone to talk out of turn or wander from...
Chinese leaders pacified the urban citizenry by turning them into an army of real estate tycoons and landlords--precisely the class of people who were shot en masse when the communist party seized control of the country 70 years ago. Thirty years on from June 4, 1989, wealth generated by expensive concrete cubes stacked into the sky on state-owned land and financed by state-owned banks has proven to be an effective balm for taming a restive population. In April, the Peoples Bank of China released a financial survey of 30,000 urban households conducted in 2019. A summary of the results by 21st Century Business News showed that the average urban family in China had assets of 3.179 million yuan (about $454,000), debt of 512,000 yuan ($73,000), and a fat net worth of 2.89 million yuan ($381,000). Source: Peoples Bank of China 2019 urban family financial survey. The average asset value of $454,000 for urban Chinese families is not that far behind the U.S. average of $792,000 (...
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