Can China Feed It's People?

If tou look at China's balance of payments, you have cause to be opptimisitc. I've never really given a damn about trade balances. I'm not sure I understand them, but I'm certain most people don't understand them. We have, we are constantly reminded, stopped being a nation of makers, whatever that means.

 

Fine, I'll see yor nonsence and then some.

 

If you look at China's agricultural sector, and you're a physicrat, then things aren't looking pretty at all. Just look at how much soybean China imports, thirty million metric ton. Why? Because China is land poor and, evidently, soybeans are a land intensive crop. I suppose that's a tough break; you can''t help what fate gives you.

 

Fine, let's suppose we're not physiocrats. Look at China's pork production. It's inefficient. China slaughters six-hundred million pigs a year. To breed those pigs, China requires a breeding herd of fifty million. America slaughters one-hundred million pigs a year. To do so, America requires a breeding hed of six million pigs. If China's pork industry was as efficent as America's, it would only take thirty-six million pigs not fifty million.

 

China, in other words, is facing multiple challenges. First, they don't have a lot of productive land or water to work with. Second, the aren't being as productive as they could be. Why is that? I don't know the figures off the top of my head, I'll have to work with sterotypes, but only 1% of America's population works in agriculture. At least 20% of China's population works in agriculture. As China's agricultural sector consolidates, they will find savings; they will become more productive, but will that be enough?

 

Demand will be up, increasing living standards, happiness indexes, and all that sort of thing. And so I worry it won't be enough. China is doomed to importing the food it eats. But I have my own pet theory explaining why.

 

I think China's educatin system is failing it. This is just an intuition. It can explain quality control problems. It can explain the pork gap. Doubtless, it can explain many of China's woes, but is it merely a just-so story? Is there any truth to it? I can't be certain. From what I've seen of the Chinese education system, I'm not impressed. There's cheating, but that's not the problem. Education in China is about gate-keeping. I suppose the same is true in America. The difference is there's a greater change of innovators crashing through the gate in America, but perhaps that's besides the point.

 

I have this sense that China's highter education system is like Egypt's before the Sprin, but it's just a sense, a feeling. It's not all that bad though. It's not like the Soviet Union and car production.