Global Voices translates reactions from netizens to news about the rapidly increasing food prices:
“Recently, can you afford meat?” Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao asked when he visited a group of poor people living in an old residential area of Beijing. On the very next day, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that China’s October inflation rate had reached 6.5 percent which was the highest during the last 10 years. Additionally, the food prices jumped 17.6 percent compared to the same month in 2006, while the price of pork, a staple for Chinese people, soared 54.9 percent.
Although Huanqiu Zaixian, subordinate to China Daily which is the first and only national English paper in China, preached Wen’s visit “let the people live more comfortably”, public voices from Internet were different in their tones. [Full text]
Also related, see “China in grip of inflation” from the Chicago Tribune, which says:
Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and his entourage set off into Beijing’s back streets one morning this month, in search of “genial informal discussion” with “people facing hard times,” as the state press put it. His visit was intended to broadcast the government’s commitment to defusing the leading complaint on the Chinese street this fall: inflation.
The highest inflation in more than a decade is frustrating citizens and unnerving political leaders who are mindful that rising prices have been a volatile factor throughout Chinese history. [Full text]
