Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

There have been a number of reports in the Chinese news media lately about pork that glows in the dark. The Southern Rural News compiled reports on this mysterious phenomenon .   According to a story circulating on Chinese news sites , earlier this month a Mr. Li in Beijing recently bought some pork that gave off a blue glow in the dark. After eating half of it, he began to worry that the pork might be harmful. The vendor who sold it assured him that the pork came from a legally licensed slaughterhouse, complete with inspection stamp. Mr. Li's glow-in-the-dark pork There have been many instances of this "flourescent pork" since 2004. According to the Southern Rural News, in Beijing it has a blue color, in Liaoning green, and in Zhejiang gold. The Internet reports discoveries of "flourescent pork" all over the country. In Feburary 2010, a Mr. Ma in Changsha got up during the night and saw a strange blue glow on his way to the toilet. He turned on the ...

China Economic and Industry News reports that China's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) is setting up a new direct reporting system designed to eliminate the chronic problem of padding statistics by local officials. The announced reform is a needed and welcome change, but it shines a light on fundamental problems in the Chinese statistical system and makes one wonder if there is any value in the reams of numbers published by Beijing every year. NBS is introducing a new direct statistical reporting system designed to cut out the opportunities for intermediary organizations to falsify data in the traditional bottom-up reporting system. In the new system companies will report data directly to a national statistical data center or to a provincial data center accredited by the national statistics bureau. Most Chinese statistics are based on a bottom-up reporting system. Local statistical departments collect data from companies, compile the data and report them up to higher-level...

Earlier this month Industry and Economic News Net posted an article signaling that 2012's rural policy emphasis will be on building water infrastructure . The article includes quotes from the head of Renmin University's School of Rural Development, who said the 2012 "Number 1 Document" will focus on construction of water-management infrastructure. The article doesn't specify what kinds of projects this includes, but other sources cite irrigation infrastructure, pumping stations, repair of degraded reservoirs, and rural drinking water projects. The 2011 "No. 1 Document" also included a focus on water management. However, the article emphasizes that rich cities need to send money down to poor rural counties to facilitate investments in irrigation and water infrastructure. The Renmin University scholar says it would be a terrible thing to leave the water management construction task half-finished. The article focuses on financing problems, specifically...

There has been a fair amount of agitation in the Chinese pork industry about the surge in pork imports this year.   Quite a few industry people blame the recent decline in pork prices on rising imports. ( The dimsums blog posted an article on this earlier this month.) When China wants to shut down imports, authorities typically use the pretext of a disease, pest, or food safety problem to reject imports. During most of 2010 China shut down pork imports from North America after a brief H1N1 scare. It took over a year to lift the ban, coincidentally during a period when pork prices in China were depressed. In view of the agitation against imports, it is perhaps ominous that AQSIQ (China's quarantine and inspection authority) held a meeting on December 26 to discuss strengthening inspection and quarantine measures specifically for imported meat . The vice director of the bureau chaired the meeting held in Tianjin. The article reveals no specific measures. The vice chairman c...

China's Inspection and Quarantine Bureau testing of pork products discovered nine samples containing illegal additives. A reporter found results of tests of hams, sausages and other meat products on the bureau's web site (the dimsums blogger could not find it) showing that meat processed in September contained a type of "lean meat powder" and nitrites that exceeded legal limits. The bureau tested 250 samples from 227 meat companies (about one sample per company?) in Beijing, Tianjin, and Hebei. They were tested for 24 different substances. The article included a table showing the nine samples that failed the tests but the table is so small it's not entirely legible. It shows the name of the company, product, and production date but it is not clear what was detected in each sample. The article reports two of the illegal substances found. One was a kind of sausage produced by a Beijing company that had excessive levels of nitrites, a chemical that is widely use...

Propaganda from Xinhua News Service describes Heilongjiang Province as "granary under heaven" and provincial champion in grain production . The article refers to the recent "economic work conference" and describes Heilongjiang's production and sale of grain as a bright spot in the economy and a base for economic growth. Heilongjiang is a sprawling province in the far northeastern corner of China that has a relatively low population density (since it was settled much later than other parts of China) and a rich black soil that makes it an agricultural powerhouse. Heilongjiang has a system of large mechanized state farms -- known as "reclamation areas" in Chinese government-speak -- set up in the 1950s as a buffer against Russian incursions. Two prominent state-owned agribusiness companies emerged from the province's state farm system: Beidahuang--the "great northern wilderness"--and the vegetable oil company "Jiusan" which is sh...

Several recent stories have discussed remarkably fast demographic change underway in rural China.  A few years ago rural China was characterized by a massive surplus of labor, but now they are talking about labor shortages. People are asking, "Who will do the farming ten years from now?" A Guangming Daily article by a Beijing University post-doctoral student reports on the disappearance of nearly all peak working-age adults in a series of villages. One Hebei province village has 458 people registered as residents, but only 216 actually live there. All young people have gone out to work and just a few workers under 60 years old are left. The youngest is a 46-year-old lady. In a Shanxi province village  there are 234 people registered but only 130 living there permanently, mostly old people and children. A large survey carried out by the Communist Party Central Committee found this pattern of aging populations was common in villages all over rural China. Ol...

China's pork imports are set to reach a record high in 2011. The climb in pork prices through most of this year has reversed over the last two months and prices have been declining. A number of industry people and journalists are putting these two pieces of information together and concluding that imported pork is driving down Chinese pork prices. "Foreign pork" going to the "China market." Source: China International Commerce News. A feedtrade.com.cn online poll asked respondents to identify the reason for declining pork prices. Of the 152 respondents, nearly half said imports were the main reason for declining pork prices. Less popular reasons were: "producers are selling lots of hogs because of worries about disease," "producers have expanded and market supply has increased due to government policies," "producers are slaughtering as fast as possible because they see prices starting to go down," "the price was very high...

A group of news items published December 8 in the New Capital News sheds light on the continuing struggle to stamp out unapproved pork marketing channels. The articles reveal  that the lower costs of illegal marketing channels are the root of the problem. "Safe" food is typically monopolized and more expensive than food that comes to the consumer through widely-dispersed channels. The news comes from Tongzhou, a suburb of Beijing. The article features an interview with a bloodied Mr. Hou, who has just returned from being treated for a concussion at the local hospital. Mr. Hou operates the local agricultural produce market in Zhangjiawan Town, just outside the East Sixth Ring Road. On December 7, Mr. Hou heard that hogs from unregistered slaughter points were being sold in the market. He sent a subordinate to confront the accused trader. The trader refused to pay a fine and a vigorous confrontation ensued. Mr. Hou went to investigate and was beaten nearly senseless accordin...

Ahead of the tenth anniversary of China's accession to the World Trade Organization on December 11 Chinese officials are putting out a propaganda blast proclaiming the successes and continuing challenges from WTO membership. At least two interviews with agricultural officials have been published: an Economic Times interview with Cheng Guoqiang , an economist with the State Council's Development Research Center who has been researching agricultural trade and support since the 1990s, and a Farmers Daily interview with Vice Minister of Agriculture Niu Zhi . Both officials emphasize that joining WTO was a strategic decision with historic significance that integrated China with the global economy and kept up the momentum on the country's market-oriented reforms. The officials emphasize that carefully designed policies allowed imports to relieve stress on China's domestic resources while shielding farmers from import competition. The officials are upbeat about China's ...

Economic Times posted a report that Wangjiang, designated as a "poverty county" in southwest Anhui Province, is constructing a palatial office building that reportedly "is bigger than eight American White Houses." An investigation team from the local prefecture, Anding City, said that the building's size does not exceed the standards.  However, the team said the approval is not entirely complete and hinted that problems could be found with the interior decorations or other issues. These are the kind of shenanigans the central government is trying to crack down on. For example, regulations on cash "awards" for grain-producing counties explicitly forbid spending funds on automobiles, "training centers," and "image-building projects."

China's National Bureau of Statistics has announced preliminary estimates of this year's huge grain crop . The Bureau says this year's grain production set a new record of 571.2 million metric tons (mmt). The grain output increased by 24.7 mmt, or 4.5%. T he Ministry of Agriculture's chief economist brags that this is the eighth consecutive increase in grain production. This hasn't happened in at least 50 years. The three major cereal grains totaled 510 mmt: Rice 200.78 mmt, up 5.03 mmt, 2.6% Wheat production was 117.92 mmt, up 2.74 mmt, 2.4% Corn 191.75 mmt, up 14.5 mmt, 8.2%.  There was no mention of soybean production which plummeted this year as farmers shifted to corn and rice. Grain production is becoming more regionally concentrated. The 13 major grain-producing provinces account for three-fourths of output, but they accounted for 90% of the increase in production this year. Two provinces produced more than 50 mmt: Heilongjiang (55.71 mmt) a...