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How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

quora.com

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Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#171

Post by changchuming »

nine_k wrote: post #152
leereeves wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment basically says that China has forced the Tibetans into slavery. Is that typical of Chinese propaganda? > the Chinese government has also forced Tibetans to build a massive amount of greenhouses...they have to work in the greenhouses taking care of tomatoes.

Did Chinese government ever mention liberty as a value? Their story is peace, satiety, social harmony, collective achievement and glory — as long as subjects conform.

I think to many Chinese people, being forced to do something that is perceived as for their own good is seen as a good thing. It's kind of in the Asian culture that the end justifies the means, as opposed to Western culture where you are free to do as you choose but you bear the consequences.

Not saying it's wrong, just a different perspective.

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#172

Post by MayeulC »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #135
crimsonalucard wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These eggs are mostly 100% men, not women. I'm sorry to say but you eggs are probably fully aware of why only men are so crazy about Asia. Also (Hint) the Chinese trolls are also 100% men. No women trolls.

> I'm sorry to say but you eggs are probably fully aware of why only men are so crazy about Asia. I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to, but I can only imagine that you're referring to Asia's sex industry? I don't know where this stereotype comes from. Is it a holdover from older generations, perhaps? I've traveled nearly every East/Southeast Asian country, met hundreds of fellow male travelers along the way,…

It might be that the parent poster took your use of "egg" as the sexual orientation meaning [1], instead of taking the metaphor more literally. It probably depends on the circles one lives in, words are often contextual.

The word was standing out a bit in your sentence, which made me wonder if that was the intended meaning for a sec. But I didn't quite get their post either, and now that I re-read it, the explanation I offered seems less plausible.

[1] As per https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=egg "Transgender person who hasn't come out yet"

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#173

Post by ETHisso2017 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #21

This and watching HBO's Chernobyl have prompted me to ask: how do communist countries work? Is there something I can read or watch to best understand things like who owns these farms, who profits from them, how do they pay workers, how do you buy a house, etc It's all as foreign to me as medieval peasants and nobles so I don't know how it works from day to day. The fact that China now has billionaires, and billionair…

China is not Communist, but it remains Leninist.

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#174

Post by Mikeb85 »

rajeshp1986 wrote: post #97

I was really impressed by the top answer until I read this statement. "I mean, the Chinese government has also forced Tibetans to build a massive amount of greenhouses on the Tibetan plateau. Those Tibetans have no time to go to temples for worshipping any more, instead, they have to work in the greenhouses taking care of tomatoes. This is why Dalai Lama is not so happy to hear this." What??

Tibet used to be a feudal serfdom with the Lamas lording over everyone else. Most Dalai Lamas were murdered by their rivals for control over the country. So yeah, of course the Lamas are upset that they're no longer in power.

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#175

Post by cure »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #37
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having to constantly inform my American friends that yes, they do have electricity and running water in Singapore I’m afraid to ask where in America is that common sentiment about Singapore. The only misconception I’ve ever heard about Singapore is being executed for possessing chewing gum.

I used to work at a very large (and reasonably well-educated) company that had coworkers from everywhere (LA, SF, Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, NYC, etc) and it was quite a common misconception amongst almost all of them (and to be fair, I also met a handful of Europeans who thought the same). Also very common was the belief that Singapore is a city in China.

> Also very common was the belief that Singapore is a city in China.

Yeah, that does not surprise me. Americans are not always that great at global geography.

I'm not sure why that is. Of course the country is huge, and American culture is such a dominant force that it is not so hard to live your entire life and never learn much (anything?) about a relatively small city-state far away in Asia. If you've never met anyone from Singapore, this doesn't surprise me at all.

It still feels like something that the US should be better at as a nation, though.

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#176

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

ModernMech wrote: post #170
jolmg wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't the fact that they're subsidized to keep them from collapsing due to low prices mean the opposite of it being easy and cheap? If the subsidies were removed, the farmers/etc would need to raise their prices to pay for whatever the subsidies paid. That new higher price would reflect the real cost of production. The subsidies are there to keep prices low and accessible despite a higher cost of production.

Well if you take corn for instance, we use a large portion of that to create high fructose corn syrup. The government subsidizes it to keep prices low, so that it's cheap enough to stick in everything from soft drinks to salad dressing to bread. We don't actually need all that sugar; it's keeping Americans fat and unhealthy. But I'll leave you to draw the obvious conclusions about what a fat sugar-addicted population…

Is it really that much of an evil scheme? Isn't it just dating back to sugar tariffs? Wasn't sugar the first tariff in the history of the US?

It seems more like it's just an entrenched industry. Corn especially now that it's tied up in gassoline and Trump's trade war.

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#177

Post by fspeech »

leereeves wrote: post #133
jaaron wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely an impressive response, but it also looks like the sort of state sponsored responses typical of Chinese propaganda. That's not to say it's inaccurate, just biased.

The comment basically says that China has forced the Tibetans into slavery. Is that typical of Chinese propaganda? > the Chinese government has also forced Tibetans to build a massive amount of greenhouses...they have to work in the greenhouses taking care of tomatoes.

If you are interested in seeing what Tibet is like today (literally) this vlogger is currently travelling through it (some of the farthest corners) in a camper: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJPCo6WJCb0aXShfcDDUffg/vid...

This episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2BtvivdbOw may be relevant to how "forced" is used in the original comment. The video shows villagers collecting trash off the sides of a remote highway to keep the land clean. On the face of it the video looks like a volunteer/community service outing but villagers are actually paid. It is not the most pleasant work, but they look happy to be doing it (and probably do not mind keeping their environment clean). The Quora answerer could have used "forced" to describe the same scene out of a sense of sarcasm (since everything is presumably "forced" there) and he would likely be tickled that this brings slavery into the discussion.

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#178

Post by asdf9240 »

klenwell wrote: post #8

I see 3 sushi restaurants on the same street, start to extrapolate in my head, and wonder how we hadn't extinguished most edible fish species decades ago. From what I've read and heard on the subject, my understanding is: (1) some we have (touched upon at end of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, for example), (2) we are in the process of doing so to most the rest, (3) fish farms are increasingly making up the difference.

extrapolating a small sample size will probably produce unreliable results.

also its possible that there are 3 sushi restaurants on the same street because of the Hotelling model of spatial location (good vid explaining that: https://youtu.be/jILgxeNBK_8)

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#179

Post by AlexCoventry »

bllguo wrote: post #46
dmix wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the first answer has “Western media won’t tell you this”. Like there’s some western conspiracy to downplay Chinese agriculture industry. The Chinese media is constantly telling their people that the US is plotting against China and is hostile to them, so the citizens don’t get any crazy ideas like democracy and human rights. While simultaneously amplifying the bad news coming out of America to show the ‘dangers’…

The tone is honestly understandable. It pains me to bring up this cliched point, but is the US media not constantly telling us that China is hostile, China is plotting? As someone with a foot in both worlds, US coverage of China is _at least_ equally warped. It's funny; to my parents and relatives in China I'm perceived as having a US bias, but everywhere else I get characterized as being too Chinese. It's hard for m…

What are the biggest misunderstandings of Chinese culture you encounter from Westerners?

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#180

Post by BurningFrog »

Without reading the link...

This kind of question is dumb. It imagines there is an entity called "China" that's tasked with feeding 1.3B people.

In reality, it's just 1,300,000,000 individuals tasked with feeding themselves, just like anywhere else in the world. We do it by division of labor. Some grow food, others build goods, others provide services. We all trade with each other so everyone can specialize at what we do best.

It's no different if the nation border happens to enclose 1.3B Chinese nationals or 300K Icelandic ones.

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