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...