China struggles to feed its people

 Thomas Lifson:

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's intrusion 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. (snip)

The state news agency Xinhua noted on Tuesday that the NPC bill on food waste is 32 pages long and extensively regulates how Chinese people consume food. Caterers of large events would be mandated to use technology to monitor clients closely.

"Catering service providers should adopt measures to minimize food waste, such as improving management systems for food purchase, storage and processing, and putting up posters to remind consumers to refrain from ordering excessive food," the bill text orders, according to Xinhua. "It calls on catering service providers to use technologies such as big data to analyze the needs of consumers to better manage food purchases, transportation, and storage."

The bill would also regulate the individual consumption of food.

"Individuals should serve or eat an appropriate amount of food at weddings, funerals, parties and other events, as well as in daily life, according to the draft," Xinhua detailed. "News media outlets are required to promote public awareness of preventing food waste, the draft says, banning them from producing, broadcasting or spreading programs or audio-video clips on binge eating."

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China had a bad year for a lot of food crops due to flooding and pests, but officials adamantly deny any shortages even as they campaign against food waste and overeating.  The specter of dependence on foreign food supplies in a time of shortage brings back uncomfortable memories of Mao's time, when mass starvation — a frequent feature of China's history — led to massive purchases of American grain, a humiliating measure.

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China is struggling to feed its people largely because it cannot afford to import food from the US because of sanctions placed on the country by Trump.  In recent days I have posted on the building of walls by the Chicoms on their border with Burma and Vietnam.  These walls are to keep Chinese workers from fleeing to jobs in Burma and Vietnam that used to be in China.  The bottom line is that Trump's policies towards China have been much more effective than mainstream media has reported.