The author has other great answers in a similar structure too! https://www.quora.com/profile/Janus-Dongye-Qimeng
One of them that has very interesting tidbits: https://www.quora.com/As-a-Chinese-person-what-do-you-think-...
How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
261–270 of 356 posts
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can't be serious, right? I don't question any of your data or even your conclusion, but do you really think WHITE-COLLAR workers having diabetes is a proof of " food is low quality empty calories"? To me, it's more about the fact that lots of young people (or people in general) in urban area have poor lifestyle. Barely has anything to do with the lack of food quality or nutrition. And I highly doubt this phenomen…
Right. As a certified nutritionist and soon to be registered dietitian, I can be serious. :-) Diabetes or hypertension are not that much related to the lifestyle. Not as much as fitness industry wants you to think. Besides being highly genetic, diabetes is also dependent on availability of simple carbs, in case of China, is white rice of which average Chinese person eats 320g per day.
I think you still missed the point. I'm not arguing with your conclusion, but the way you "prove" it.
Keep in mind the topic is "how is China able to provide enough food for 1.4 billion people", which implies they must have some efficient or cheap way. And I'd agree "rice" probably is one of the reason.
However, you firstly used "Shanghai's white-collar" as an example, which is the least representative group for this topic (because how cheap the food is is less of a concern for the high-income groups).
You also mentioned obesity, which only dramatically increases when China got richer. Again, totally irrelevant to the topic. If anything, Chinese people probably eat less rice now due to the increase of variety.
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#263Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re-reading my comment, I should have actually written “I don’t disagree with you that the two can coexist, but only in certain contexts”. I’m of the opinion that it’s impossible to achieve economic progress with social upheaval, threats of separatism and terrorist attacks. Economic progress is incompatible with the others. It's the extreme poverty and lack of economic opportunities which drive destabilizing forces su…
It didn’t really work for the British, it didn’t work for the Afrikaners, it didn’t really work for the Americans, why do the Chinese think they will get it right?
If I understand the point you’re trying to make correctly, you’re likening China’s claim to Xinjiang to that of the historical colonial powers?
Because if we’re going to go down that road, I have to warn you that the Xinjiang story is not nearly as black and white as the British, Dutch or American stories.
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#264The country I don't understand how they do it is Bangladesh. A country the size of New York State with 164 million people. (50% of the US population). As I understand it, they generate 90% of the food they require.
From the wikipedia[0]: >The country is notable for its soil fertility land, including the Ganges Delta, Sylhet Division and the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Agriculture is the largest sector of the economy, making up 18.6 percent of Bangladesh's GDP in November 2010 and employing about 45 percent of the workforce.[233] The agricultural sector impacts employment generation, poverty alleviation, human resources development…
The information is outdated and no longer true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textile_industry_in_Bangladesh
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#265Yeah sorry - that answer is the sort that glosses over a huge amount of facts to present a clean a-b-c dependency tree along side a decent heap of sino philia.
So in particular the point on fish farms- fish farms are hard, the fish need many different things to be happy and not sick or affected by parasites.
This means medicines, treatment and more - further this is only viable if you have transportation, refrigeration and markets.
Those make a larger difference than the base technology. Without the transfer and storage tech, the rest is simply bottlenecked.
Further this
>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.
Is simply Chinese propo. The Dalai Lama is unhappy, if at all, because China has taken over what used to be an independent nation, decides how their religion should operate, crushed dissent and even ostracized their own citizens who made the mistake of talking to Tibetan protesters to do the very simple human thing of figuring out the other side.
(Voting behavior and soft shilling of the poster in the thread is also pretty odd.)
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#266The author's answer to the question 'How do mainland Chinese feel about the protests in Hong Kong on the extradition law amendment?':
https://www.quora.com/How-do-mainland-Chinese-feel-about-the...
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#267Earlier quoted context omitted.
Junk food is not "real" food
Any single food in inappropriate quantities can be called junk food, any food eaten in moderation and with variety can be appropriately nutritious...
In the world of abstract logic, perhaps. In practical reality, no.
Some foods are just more nutritious than others, and some foods cause more trouble than the nutrients that they provide. There is junk food that is just based on empty calories and toxic elements that then have to be worked on by the body to just remove (much more so than other food). You could say that junk food is perhaps better than no food, if someone is really starving. But it does not magically become good for you because you eat it "in moderation and variety".
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that calories production per unit of labour is a big concern when you don't export produce and you've got access to so much labor and a socialist economy where food prices are fixed and jobs are all but guaranteed. The Dutch have a stronger focus on produce export and a higher income per capita, so they have to be a lot more efficient in order to be competitive in the global economy.
calories per unit labour is a good measure of how advanced the agriculture tech is. Just because labour is cheap, doesn't mean it's efficient - and imagine if that labour could be spent on other things (while still maintining the output).
I understand that, but China is still industrializing and has an enormous abundance of labor. They have over 425 million farmers (and a decade ago, that number was 700 million). At achievable efficiency, that could easily be done by as few as 50 to 100 million, but then there just wouldn't be any available jobs for the other 300+ million people. China is already using workers in massive unneeded building projects and has an army of over 2 million soldiers and who knows what else, just to keep the unemployment down.
A higher produce efficiency is not only not needed, it is unwanted. Full labor market participation is of much more value to the Chinese right now than the efficiency of the produce industry.
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't see visible homelessness nearly as much as in US big cities. Chinese friends I've discussed this with attribute it to familial piety acting as a much stronger safety net; people will make big sacrifices to save their relatives from total failure. It's expected, and a stark contrast to the American notion of extreme individualism. There's also no opiod epidemic.
That's interesting...so more societal than government structure. Anyone know what the closest remaining country is to actual communist dogma is? Vietnam? Cuba? Also interested in what the most purely socialist country might be.
Venezuela?
Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?
#270This quora answer is pure CCP propaganda, why is this post on the HN home page?