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Comment by justinzollars | Hacker News Reader

> This will cause prices of pork in China to rise. China will have to import pork to fill the hole in order to avoid a political crisis.

I see this all the time. Is there any data to suggest a political crisis is possible? China is a well controlled authoritarian country.

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The history of China is a history of near constant rebellion, that is ultimately quashed by central government. They worry about rebellion, they prepare for it. the current regime was ultimately born of revolution, and any revolutionary government is constantly paranoid about counter-revolutions, it becomes part of the DNA of the ruling class to worry about this stuff.

Combine this with food riots being the fastest and oldest way to lose control, and it's remarkable you're even asking the question. It's like someone asking if the air can even be polluted, after decades of regulation have been implemented to control it. Well, yeah... just remove the regulations and see what happens.

That's quite true. There is a stereotype the Chinese people passively obey the government, no matter what it does. But if you look at the history, that is not at all the case.

In fact, from what I have read there is even a principle in Confucianism that if the people are starving and are in revolt, it means the government has mismanaged the country and has "lost the mantle of heaven" and should be replaced.

I like how all the keyboard experts pop out of the woodwork when it comes to China like for almost no other country, yet objectively they probably know the least about the country.

Nobody has talked about the mandate of heaven for at least a hundred years, orientalist historiography notwithstanding. Historically, compared to other peer societies over the same periods, China has been very stable for long periods of time. It is only in the extremely myopic recent that the so-called "developed world" has seemed more stable and prosperous, and even that's highly debatable in aspects. On the other hand, when it does happen, rebellion or discontent for basic food safety reasons has no unique Chinese angle to it because it happens all the time all over the world, so I'm not sure what there is to gain by injecting something Chinese into it, except knee-jerk ideology.

justinzollars said that there is no possibility of a political crisis because it is a well-controlled authoritarian country, and then afterburner present some reasons why the government is afraid of one, and then I supported afterburners view.

Your comment diverts the discussion away from this very important issue, which I assume was your intention.

Seems like you're the one arguing China is "special" in some way, while we're doing the opposite.

> Combine this with food riots being the fastest and oldest way to lose control

Is this true? Prompted by your phrase "any revolutionary government", I thought of three ways for a government system to gain control:

1. Winning a civil war (aka revolution).

2. Winning a war of conquest.

3. Organic development from a previous system.

Stipulating that option #3 isn't really a way to lose control, it still seems to me that #2 is probably older than #1.

What are some of these said food riots, that's a gap in my history knowledge.

Are you asking about the existence of food riots in general? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_food_riots

Cost of food rising in China:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/business/china-food-price...

Feels like every generation needs to perform its coup. Once upon a time you could set your clock to whether there was a revolt going on in places like Spain or Turkey.

I just mean there could be political unrest because pork makes up a not-insignificant portion of their CPI. Point is China doesn't want a huge run-up in pork prices.

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