更多财富，更多肉 中国崛起的麻烦
来源：英国《卫报》
十年前，张秀文（音译，Zhang Xiuwen）从云南香格里拉附近的农村搬到北京肮脏的西郊。对他而言，他牺牲了风景，但在生活方式和饮食方面获得了更多的补偿。他曾经是农民，如今是城市里的一名乒乓球教练。他不再种植粮食，他买粮食。在贫穷童年，他常常挨饿，如今他每天都可以吃得起肉。
在这个人口最多的国家，这种趋势一再上演，影响全球谷物和奶产品的价格，而且随着谷物被转而用于饲养动物，世界穷人挨饿的风险加大。
西方供应者宣称，这种变化将在世界市场掀起涟漪。世界最大的肉类制品上泰森食品公司（Tyson Foods）的中国业务主管赖斯（James Rice）表示，这是中国自给自足时代的结束，今年将是中国可以生产足够供应自己的玉米的最后一年，是它蛋白质自给自足的最后一年。
他预计中国到2010年将进口价值45亿美元的蛋白质，当中国从净出口国变成净进口国，对全球价格会产生巨大影响，看看石油就知道了。
但以西方的标准来看，张秀文是一个温和的消费者。他北京的家很小。他和他的妻子只有一个孩子。他们仅有的家电就是一台电冰箱、一台电视、一台电脑和一台洗衣机。
但是，和他的童年相比，很明显看到他朝城市中产阶级的方向走了多远。大约60年前，在毛泽东的大跃进后，张秀文的祖父那一辈有很多人死于饥荒。30年前，他在云南的父母仍然糊口艰难。
如今，他的家庭不缺吃的。张秀文月收入5000元人民币，他只需要花五分之一在食品上，就可以确保味美均衡的饮食。15年前，多数北京居民在冬天主要吃大白菜。如今，张秀文可以去当地的商店或者最靠近的超市购买新鲜的水果和蔬菜。
最具象征意义的变化是肉类。这个世界上人口最多的国家正变得更加喜欢吃肉。在1980年，但是人口仍然不足十亿，中国人均吃肉量是20公斤；去年，中国人均吃肉量是54公斤，而且人口与1980年相比多了三亿。如今，整个国家一年吃掉超过6000万吨肉，大约相当于2.4亿头牛，或者6亿头猪，或者240亿只鸡。把谷物从世界穷人身边拿走已经成为一种世界趋势。在发展中国家，肉类的消费量一年上涨超过5%。
要生产一公斤的牛肉，需要8公斤的饲料；一公斤的猪肉，需要6公斤的饲料；一公斤的鸡肉需要2公斤的饲料。在全世界，每年需要7亿吨谷物喂养动物。
张秀文表示，在20岁以前，他没喝过牛奶。如今他家每天可以喝完一升牛奶。这将变得更加平常。去年，中国总理温家宝表示，他梦想有一天，中国每一个孩子每天都能喝上一品脱牛奶。这样，要么需要牛群规模大幅度扩大，要么这种需求反映在国际市场上。中国目前进口世界上三分之一的贸易牛奶。在德国（一个大出口国），消费者抱怨说中国人的需求推高了他们早餐谷物的价格。
和很多城市人相比，张秀文的饮食比较朴素。他很少在餐馆吃饭，从来不去快餐店。但年轻的北京人和纽约、伦敦的年轻人一样，热衷于炸薯条、汉堡和炸鸡。在过去20年，在中国，肯德基从一家店拓展到2000家店，麦当劳从0拓展到800家店。
过去三十年，中国有3亿人脱贫，饮食的改善让这个国家变得更健康。根据世界粮食计划署的报告，如今中国一个6岁的小男孩比1978年经济改革之初时的男孩重6公斤。但是也有迹象显示越来越多儿童和成年人变得肥胖。
北京坚称中国不是全球食品价格高涨的主要推动者。很多分析家表示赞同。中国以食品高度自给自足为豪，特别是鉴于它是以不足世界7%的耕地养活20%的人口。
张秀文家的午餐是醋溜猪肉、西红柿、馒头、马铃薯、西兰花和黄瓜炒蛋，远非许多西方餐厅餐桌上的盛宴。以平均来计算，美国和欧洲人消耗的肉类比中国人多。但依中国的情况来看，令人担心的不是个人的消费，而是13亿人一年经济增长超过10%所带来的消费规模与增长速度。曾经是农民的张秀文明白这种担忧。他认为，最好的办法就是避免浪费。（作者 Jonathan Watts）
译文为摘译，英文原文地址：http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/30/food.china1
英文原文：
More wealth, more meat. How China's rise spells troubleIn the fourth part of our series, Jonathan Watts reports from China, where rising demand for meat from a growing middle class is destabilising world food prices
Jonathan Watts The Guardian, Friday May 30 2008
Before lunch Zhang Xiuwen asks his family to give thanks. The table in their small Beijing flat is set with a simple meal: garlic pork in vinegar, fresh tomatoes, leavened bread, potato, cauliflower, and fried egg with cucumber. But for Chinese migrants such as Zhang and his wife it is a feast that they could only have dreamed about when growing up in a poor country village.
Ten years ago Zhang swapped the mountain skyline of his rural home near Shangrila in south-western Yunnan province for the grimy suburbs of west Beijing. For Zhang what he sacrificed in scenery he has more than made up for in lifestyle and diet. Once a rural farmer, Zhang is now an urban tennis coach. He no longer grows food, he buys it. Often hungry during a poor childhood, he can now afford meat every day.
It is a trend repeated across the most populous nation that is affecting global prices of grain and dairy products, and raising the risk of hunger among the world's poor as grain is diverted to fatten up animals.
Western suppliers claim the shift will ripple through world markets for years. "This is the end of self-sufficiency for China," says James Rice, chief of China operations for Tyson Foods, the world's biggest meat producer. "This year will be the last in which China produces enough corn for itself, and the last that it is self-sufficient in protein."
He predicts China will be importing $4.5bn (£2.27bn) worth of protein by 2010. "Whenever China goes from being a net exporter to a net importer of anything, it has a big impact on global prices. Just look at oil. The $40 per barrel price popped just when China started buying."
Modest consumer
By western standards, Zhang is a modest consumer. His Beijing flat is small. He and his wife are limited to one child by the strict family planning policy. Their only home appliances are a fridge, a television, a computer and a washing machine.
But, compared with his childhood, it is clear how far he has moved towards the urban middle class. Almost 60 years ago tens of millions among Zhang's grandparent's generation died of starvation in the famines that followed Mao Zedong's disastrous Great Leap Forward. Thirty years ago his parents in Yunnan were still struggling to put enough food on the table. "In my childhood I sometimes went hungry. During July and August, just before harvest, we usually did not have enough to eat. I remember once when some guests came to visit us we could not find any food at home so we had to borrow some wheat powder from the neighbour to make pancakes."
Today the family never goes short. Zhang spends only one-fifth of his 5,000 yuan (£365) monthly income on food, but it is plenty to ensure a tasty, balanced diet for him, his wife, their baby and the relatives who come to dine at least once a week.
Fifteen years ago most homes in Beijing relied primarily on cabbage to see them through the winter. Today Zhang can buy fresh fruit and vegetables from his local store or from the nearest supermarket. In recent years America's Wal-Mart, France's Carrefour, Britain's Tesco and Japan's Ito-Yokado have been expanding in China faster than in any other country. Together they are opening hundreds of new stores every year in the expectation that Chinese consumption will surge as its middle class grows bigger and richer.
Nothing symbolises such change more than meat. The world's most populous nation is becoming more carnivorous. In 1980, when the population was still under one billion, the average Chinese person ate 20kg (44lbs) of meat; last year, with an extra 300 million people, it was 54kg. The country as a whole now chomps through more than 60m tonnes of meat a year, roughly equivalent to 240 million cows, or 600 million pigs, or 24 billion chickens. It is a worldwide trend that is taking grain away from the world's poor. The consumption of meat in developing countries is rising by more than 5% a year.
Zhang reckons his family spend about 250 yuan a week on food, half of it on meat. "I love beef. I was told it is a good source of protein for sportsmen, that it gives us strength. But I also buy more chicken, pork and fish than before so that I get a balanced diet."
To produce a kilogram of beef farmers need 8kg of feed; for pork about 6kg; for chicken 2kg. Worldwide, 700m tonnes of grain are needed to fatten animals each year.
As he slices pork in his kitchen, Zhang explains that even the lunch he is preparing would have been considered a luxury during his childhood. "In the past we couldn't imagine a meal like this," he says. "Children looked forward to spring festival, partly because it was fun, but also because it was a chance to eat meat. But now we can eat meat every day if we want. It has become part of our lives."
Rare luxury
Until the age of 20, Zhang says he never had milk. The reason was simple: his family had no cows. It was a similar story across the country, which has traditionally had a very low reliance on dairy products. In many lowland regions butter was a rare luxury. For Zhang the change came when he moved to the city. "Now I earn a living to support my family, we drink quite a lot of milk. I guess we get through a one-litre carton every day."
This will become more commonplace. Last year the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said he dreamed of the day when every child in the country could consume a pint of milk a day. That will require either a sharp rise in herd sizes or greater demand on international markets. China is currently importing one-third of the world's traded milk. In Germany - a major exporter - consumers have complained that Chinese demand is pushing up the cost of their breakfast cereal.
Zhang's diet is modest compared with many urbanites. He rarely eats at restaurants and never goes to fast-food outlets. But young Beijingers are becoming as enthusiastic about French fries, burgers and fried chicken as their counterparts in New York or London. In the past 20 years KFC has gone from one to 2,000 outlets in China, McDonald's from zero to 800.
In lifting 300 million people out of poverty over the past 30 years, China also saw an improvement in diets that made the country healthier. According to the World Food Programme, a six-year-old boy today in China is 6kg heavier and 6cm taller than his counterpart at the start of economic reforms in 1978. But there are signs that more children and adults are simply becoming fatter. In the first 15 years after economic reforms the number of people defined as overweight in China more than doubled to 200 million, according to the Asian Development Bank.
Wang remembers her parents talking about hunger, about stomach aches that came from a diet of only broomcorn and sweet potato, about grandparents who had to forage in the bracken for scraps of left-over harvest to feed their children. Her husband has similar anecdotes about the suffering of the past, but now he says the situation has gone too far in the opposite direction.
"Some people even in their thirties already have high blood pressure, high cholesterol and other health problems," he says. "Many [tennis] students want to lose weight. Some are very fat and have difficulty running or walking up stairs. That is when they realise they are overweight and need to exercise."
Growing demand for meat has pushed up prices in the past year and a half. Restaurateurs and shop owners are feeling the pinch. Most buy from Baliqiao market, a vast centre of wholesale suppliers a few miles east of Zhang's home in east Beijing. Since the last day of 2006 stall holders have increased the price of a kilogram of pork - the most popular meat in China - from 12.3 yuan to 20.3 yuan. Beef has risen by 73%, lamb by 65% and chicken by 30%.
Inflation is a growing source of political and economic concern and could also dent China's competitiveness and push up global prices of manufactured goods. With costs rising in the cities, factories have to offer migrants higher wages to lure them from the countryside, where their crops now bring in better incomes. Even salary rises are often not enough. Many manufacturers complain of worker shortages. The pool of cheap Chinese labour is clearly not as inexhaustible as thought.
The government's inflation target of 4.8% this year looks impossible. Last month the consumer price index rose by 8.5%, driven largely by food and oil increases. Overseas analysts warn that this could have a damaging knock-on effect for the global economy. China's cheap goods have kept consumer prices low for more than a decade. But as workers need to spend more on food they need to earn more, and the cost of goods goes up. The risk of a new bout of global inflation is rising.
Beijing insists China is not a major contributor to global food price inflation. Many analysts agree. China boasts an impressive degree of food self-sufficiency, particularly given it must feed more than one-fifth of the world's people on less than 10% of the arable land.
The lunch that Zhang cooked for his family is far from the lavish feasts seen on tables in many western restaurants. On average Americans eat 129% more meat than the Chinese; Europeans consume 83% more. But in China's case the fear is not of individual consumption, but of the multiples of scale and speed of 1.3 billion people growing richer at a rate of more than 10% a year. The former farmer is aware of the concerns. The best way to deal with them, Zhang says, is to avoid waste.
"According to an old Chinese saying, we should wear enough clothing to avoid feeling cold and eat enough food to avoid feeling hungry. That means we should not eat too luxuriously. We should practise this rule by ourselves and encourage others to do the same. It would be good if we could influence others to save food. My child is still young but when he drops even one grain of rice I ask him to pick it up and eat it. I tell him it is the product of a lot of hard work by an old farmer somewhere."