From NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday:
“I have a dream,” Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China once said. But his dream wasn’t about civil rights for all or racial harmony. It was about a future where every Chinese child would have enough milk to drink — a half-liter a day for each child, to be exact.
Wen’s vision has given rise to a gigantic new market of milk drinkers in China, even as the demand there and in other developing nations has driven up prices worldwide.
In the United States, for example, a gallon of milk now costs about the same as a gallon of gasoline. And in China, some shoppers say they’ll have to cut back if the government doesn’t subsidize milk.