Going the whole hog
ALL governments, it is said, are nine meals away from revolution. That may well explain the note of fear that has entered recent official statements in China. With pig meat accounting for some 60% of meat consumption, the fact that the price of pork, already at an all-time high, is rising daily means there’s something close to panic in political circles. A 25% increase on the price in a month takes some explaining and the truth that it is all caused by African swine fever doesn’t wash in a country where the Government claims always to have everything under control.
Once this disease is out of hand, there is little administratively that can be done— slaughter is the only cure, which has meant that the Chinese pig herd has fallen by more than one-third in the past year. The authorities have retreated to the traditional Communist remedies—setting targets for production in each province and, in some cases, for each city area. These actions are all based on the belief that politicians can solve anything. However, like King Canute of the myth, they will find that there are forces that they cannot control. Already, Hu Chunhua, the forlorn figure charged with dealing with the issue, has warned his apparatchiks that any failure to control prices ‘will undermine the image of the party and government’.
Already, widespread air and river pollution has engendered serious protests, very close to revolts, every year for the past decade. The determined stand on emission reduction, which is now part of official Chinese policy, is largely a response to the serious fear of civil unrest. It shows, yet again, that even in the most rigid authoritarian regimes, people will not put up with failure to deliver the basics of a decent life. For most Chinese, these are pretty minimal, but those of us who live in countries that are more fortunate
would do well to remember that the definition of ‘decent’ depends upon the things to which people have grown used.
We in Britain have long enjoyed choice, limited only by what we can afford. The supermarket revolution has brought a vast range of products, particularly fresh food, to almost every corner of the nation. Most people expect to get what they want, when they want it and at a price that, for decades, has fallen consistently. The complex web of just-in-time delivery, the advanced cool chain and frictionless borders stretching from Connemara to Cyprus have made all this possible. However, the system is now so interconnected and interdependent that it’s much more vulnerable to disruption than in simpler times—when limited choice and expectation were so much more easily satisfied.
Michael Gove may characterise the likelihood of such disruption as ‘bumps in the road’, but, in terms of public understanding, ‘bumps’ are much better described as great pits into which governments can easily fall. For, just as the Chinese know that the party and government in their country will be blamed for the price of pig meat, so, despite his comfortable assurances, does Mr Gove know that any interruption of normal supermarket service here will be blamed on the Conservative party and Boris Johnson’s administration.
A no-deal Brexit wouldn’t mean that people will starve, but it would mean that, especially with the pound at its low ebb, food prices would continue to rise and many of the things that we now take for granted would not be available. In the end, people will not connect this with the way they voted in the Referendum. They will put the blame fairly and squarely on the Government and they will wreak their revenge.
With the price of pork rising daily in China, there’s something close to panic in political circles