China apparently facing food shortages, introduces bill to regulate overeating

China’s high tech surveillance state will be watching how much people eat, according to provisions of a bill just introduced and sure to pass its rubber stamp National People’s Congress legislative body. Writing at Breitbart, Frances Martel is appropriately skeptical about the repeated official denials that food shortages have anything to do with the state’ss intusion into the most intimate details of life for its citizens.

China’s communist rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress (NPC), introduced a bill Tuesday that would mandate a government war against “food waste” that includes ordering guests at weddings and other public events to eat less.

The bill also demands regulation of online videos showing people, particularly young women, binge eating — an increasingly popular trend on Chinese social media.

It may be hard for Americans to understand the role of food and public eating in the Chinese mind. Banquets are a major way to demonstrate conspicuous consumption and people think and talk about food a lot more than most Westerners. One common greeting when meeting someone on the street is, “Have you eaten?”

Martel presents a number of examples of official denials of a problem that convince me that there really is a problem.

China’s dictatorial system looks strong from the outside, and appeals to people like Tom Friedman as efficient and capable of achieving great things. But what Friedman and many American elites miss is the level of dissatisfaction among those not sharing in the benefits of industrialization, while paying its costs in crowding, pollution, and high-handed officialdom. China’s focus on surveillance and state control of personal behavior demonstrates the inherent weakness of a top-down, corrupt system of governance.

The Chinese state media denies all claims of a food crisis but, Beijing is reaching out to suppliers. It is on a global hunt for supplies. China’s imports of barley, corn, sorghum and wheat have jumped by more than 83 per cent. There could reportedly be a shortfall of 20 to 30 million tonnes of grain this season.

There's a good chance China's lying again.

If there was a food shortage and their people were dying they wouldn't give a damn. The ONLY thing chinese 'elites' care about is themselves. If china's trying to import more food it's because their next ' bioweapoin release' might be something that kills crops around the world and they want to corner that market.

Yes, the chinese are smart... and hard working... but every culture they create is a brutal eff-up. That's the most important thing to know about them... as individuates they can be fine people...as a collective - as a culture - they only create shit and misery...

There's a good chance China's lying again.

If there was a food shortage and their people were dying they wouldn't give a damn. The ONLY thing chinese 'elites' care about is themselves. If china's trying to import more food it's because their next ' bio-weapon release' might be something that kills crops around the world and they want to corner the food market.

You know your stuff. And there are other problems they are facing and are in right now. There is still no genuine rule of law that effectively limits the power of government, no independent judiciary to enforce the rights promised in the nation’s constitution, no free market for ideas that is essential for innovation and for avoiding major policy errors, no competitive political system that fosters a diversity of views, and a large state sector that stifles private initiative and breeds corruption. China’s slowing growth rate, its increasing debt burden, environmental problems, and the increasing tension in U.S.-China relations compound the challenges facing Beijing.

Nevertheless, China faces major challenges to its future development. As there is still no genuine rule of law that effectively limits the power of government, there is no independent judiciary to enforce the rights promised in the nation’s constitution. Thus no free market for ideas that is essential for innovation and for avoiding major policy errors and no competitive political system that fosters a diversity of views. And a large state sector that stifles private initiative and breeds corruption. China’s slowing growth rate, its increasing debt burden, environmental problems, and the increasing tension in U.S.-China relations compound the challenges facing Beijing.

President Xi Jinping, the most powerful leader since Mao Zedong, has used the rhetoric of free trade for the market in both goods and ideas. At the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, he stated: “We must remain committed to developing global free trade … and say no to protectionism” (Xi 2017a). Meanwhile, in his October 2017 report at the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), he told his comrades: “We should follow the principle of letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend” (Xi 2017b: 36–37).

While President Xi’s rhetoric is notable, the reality is that China continues to protect its state‐run monopolies, restricts entry to financial and other markets, violates intellectual property rights, and severely restricts free speech (see Lardy 2019). Indeed, the 2018 World Press Freedom Index, compiled by Reporters without Borders, ranked China 176th out of 180 countries — only four ranks above North Korea.1

The closing of virtual private networks and the silencing of those who advocate a just rule of law and limited/constitutional government — such as Mao Yushi at the liberal Unirule Institute, whose website was shut down and office shuttered (Buckley 2018) — reflect a growing anti‐liberal sentiment under Xi Jinping, who is now “President for life.”

Sheng Hong, the director of Unirule, has argued that if China is to advance, the authorities must understand “the intrinsic tie between free trade and free expression.” The logic is simple: “Free trade refers to the free exchange of commodities, and free expression refers to the free exchange of ideas. As ideas are more valuable than commodities, anyone that truly defends the freedom to trade will defend the freedom of expression”

But allowing a greater scope for the market, however, means reducing the scope of government and diminishing the power of the CCP. Don’t hold your breath on that one. These guys are more power hungry than the liberals. And they will just shoot you right out in the open.

wy69

the problems of food shortages is real.

Part of it is the food chain and logistics, part of it an increase in poverty, and part of it is natural disasters that hit parts of Asia.

Here in the Philippines we had flooding and typhoons that affected our rice harvest. This also hit China's southern rice growing area, parts of India and parts of Japan.

The wuhan virus made things worse because of economic shutdowns, of course. It caused a problem with the supply chain.

But there also was a lot of pigs that were destroyed because they were affected with “African swine flu” virus: this affected the Philippines but not as badly as in China. And then there were problems with the chicken that are bred and raised on farms.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/06/millions-of-chickens-at-risk-amid-china-lockdowns-due-to-coronavirus.html

The US news ignores that the Wuhan flu is terrible in a lot of other countries. For example, do you know that right now Korea has a big outbreak? We're not so bad in the Philippines thank God, but we are still in partial shutdown, and although the gov’t has discouraged people going home for Christmas, they haven't tried to stop them completely: because although people have been pretty obedient to staying home, there is a limit on how much people can take.

So we'll probably have another huge outbreak in January.

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