China’s Pig Pandemic | Hacker News Reader

China’s Pig Pandemic

bloomberg.com

123 pointsacdanger104 comments

TFA says: "For decades, the Chinese government’s top priority has been the preservation of social stability."

It should say: "For millenia, the Chinese government’s top priority has been the preservation of social stability."

Isn’t the idea if a “continuous China” for millennia largely a myth? Expanding, fracturing, re-unifying? [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Chinese_history

I think that it is like any other country. The USA has existed for 232 years. But Alaska and Hawaii only joined in 1959. New Mexico joined in 1912. And has been divided for 1.7% of the time (4 years of civil war) while still was incomplete.

All nations sell the idea that has longer histories that they really have. The concept of nation is a useful improvement over tribalism and city-states. But, it is just fiction. Nations are created, changed and destroyed all the time.

So, you are completely right about China being largely a myth.

Successive Chinese governments have of course had many periods of great instability over history. But the Chinese nation as a people (or at least the Han conception of it) has existed for far longer than any one government, and stability, unity, harmony, etc. have been a part of that nation's identity and ideals for a long time.

Uyghur minorities are reaping tons of harmony in concentration camps, to be sure.

I didn't know this detail about Alaska and Hawaii. Thanks for sharing.

Except when it wasn't for a few notable decades.

It takes less than a decade of concerted effort to erase ~4000 years of culture.

>>Meanwhile, China's hierarchical system remains fragmented and autonomous below the top levels of power.

exponential decay wrt distance to Beijing

「天高皇帝遠」 as the Chinese saying goes. (en: Heaven is high and the emperor far away)

Russian has a very similar adage:

До Бога высоко, до Царя́ далеко. (God is high above and the Tsar is far away)

Бог високо, цар далеко in Bulgarian too.

I heard: "The mountains are high, and the emperor is far away."

China’s Pig Pandemic Should Worry Everyone

What's up with the title? I could understand for something like SARS, but African swine fever only affects pigs.

This is discussed throughout the article.

While the outbreak may not be as immediately dangerous to humans as SARS, the official response should worry Chinese, as well as public health authorities globally. Thanks to its geographic position on migratory bird routes, its vast and largely unregulated livestock industry, and its weak public health institutions, China is a prime candidate to serve as the incubator for the next pandemic capable of killing millions of humans. Ensuring that Beijing responds to that epidemic in a responsible manner must be a global priority.

The title is alarmist, but the article backs it up somewhat. The handling of this pandemic (even if it only affects pigs) can tell us how they may inadequately handle an epidemic among people. It also factors into inflation in the Chinese economy as pork is one of the primary sources of protein for many Chinese. Food supply instability in China is good for no one.

My thesis is that food price instability (say, a doubling of prices) in a short time would lead to massive social unrest, possibly revolution.

China expends enormous resources to maintain its country (arguably, it's more efficient as 3 or 4 separate countries), and a jump in the cost of food would disrupt that delicate balance.

The reduction in pigs will drop demand and price for soy which is already commonly used for meat/protein substitutes (like the Impossible Burger v2 is a lot of soy, and raw TVP is pretty close to ground meat in texture). I don't think that people will be happy, but they aren't going to have to go hungry unless they're carnivores.

Wouldn't the reduction in pigs increase demand for soy? I think that must have been what you meant.

Virus mutation can allow viruses to just species:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu#Hypotheses_about_t...

It is possible that the Spanish flu originated in China and was brought to Canada by laborers: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/01/140123-span...

just -> jump, right?

Viral reassortment and horizontal gene transfer are particularly of concern in swine, because they can host many viruses that also infect humans. If a novel swine virus combines with one of the zoonotic diseases a human pandemic is possible.

Reassortment in swine is a primary mechanism for how the influenza virus mutates so often, making it a moving target for vaccines.

Viruses have a nasty tendency to move from animals to people, particularly in places like China where people and animals are very dense and sanitation is horrible.

It's an opinion piece, seemingly subjective statements like this one is common place.

The key takeaway is the slow and ineffective response from Chinese authorities at tackling the spread of African Swine Fever. China's response to SARS attracted a lot of criticism and the swine fever epidemic has shown that a lot of the flaws haven't been fully fixed. This paves the way for a future epidemic that may infect humans. It is somewhat alarmist but also very valid concern.

An infectious disease that doesn't impact humans can be just as destructive on our society by destroying economically important livestock or crops.

Aside from the very good points I've already seen pointed out...

The prediction is that 30% of China's pig herd will die. Pork is their staple protein and if 30% of their supply disappears the price will go through the roof and then it will be almost impossible to deny on Chinese media that there's an out-of-control epidemic and the government isn't prepared to do anything about it.

Don't they have massive pork reserves?

It takes time to get to where it needs to go. There would still be a shock.

I doubt it (but I don't know). Pork doesn't store well, your best best is freeze it, but that requires constant energy. You can salt it as well. Either way though after 1 year quality goes way down.

China does have large stores of Corn and Soybeans, which they can feed to pigs. Grain stores fairly well once you dry it, no need for expensive refrigeration. Quality goes down over time, but you can still get several years. Since most of this is feed to animals quality loss is not as big a deal (poison of a few animals is an economic issue - moral concerns can be hid from consumers much easier)

> Your best best is freeze it, but that requires constant energy.

Making up the difference between freezing and the ambient temperature requires constant energy.

China has access to a lot of land where the mean average temperature gets close to or below freezing[1], they've also got access to permafrost[2] areas.

Whether they have long-term strategic stockpiles of meat is another matter, but I don't see why running such a stockpile wouldn't be relatively cheap for them given their access to cold areas. Once you decide to store meat long enough it makes sense to put it on a train to Tibet instead of paying to keep it in a freezer in the heat by the coast.

1. https://www.topchinatravel.com/china-map/average-annual-temp... 2. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Distribution-of-permafro...

Does the US have long-term strategic stockpiles of meat?

I have a couple cans of SPAM in the pantry. Should last me a few years.

A strategic stockpile of luxury goods would be silly.

In the event of a major war or other event that causes supply problems you need to provide people with their basic food needs. Doing that with canned goods or even protein bars/powder to the extent that a balanced diet requires some amount of protein is much more cost-effective and reliable.

Similarly you'd stock up on something like canned lentils or chickpeas if you're worried about the carbohydrate supply, not stock up on frozen bread.

But China might enact such a policy of stocking up on luxury goods since they're continually paranoid that their dictatorship is balanced on the knife-edge of "don't mind the totalitarianism as long as the trains run on time".

Any new pandemic can come mainly from two possible sources:

- mutation of an existing pathogen affecting humans - mutation of an existing animal pathogen so that it can start infecting humans

The first is more likely with inadequate treatment and lack of containment, the latter is more likely if there's more exposure of humans to the animal virus. With 130 million pigs infected with this disease there's quite a lot of exposure.

We'll take the everyone-worrying out of the title above.

What I worry about is that an increasing population also means an increasing "surface area" where diseases can occur in the first place, not just that they spread faster.

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