Another interruption in Xinjiang blogging due to an excellent piece on Chinese pork prices in the NYT by Keith Bradsher.
The main story has been pointed out below on this blog. Food prices, particularly pork, seem to be on the rise. In addition to covering the basics, Bradsher goes running with the pigs. You see, the US strategic petroleum reserve is an emergency source of oil in case of, well, emergency. Similarly, China has a “strategic pork reserve.”
The crisis over pork prices in China, like the jolt many Americans feel when gasoline prices jump, offers one example of how prices can suddenly soar. The Chinese government is struggling to cope — including deliberating whether to sell a snuffling, smelly strategic reserve of hundreds of thousands of live pigs kept at special subsidized farms for precisely the shortage the country is now facing.
There are no words. The central level reserve is managed by the Ministry of Commerce. I have not yet been able to find the website for the reserve but will pass it along when I do.
Jeremy Wallace 
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