Flooding of Yellow River in Shangluo, Shaanxi Province on August 6. (Weibo photo)

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping’s call for an end to food waste is a sign that the communist country is facing a shortage of grains and pork after months of flooding, insect infestations, the African swine fever (ASF), and the impact of the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19).

According to China’s state-run media mouthpiece Xinhua, Xi called for an end to food waste, describing the problem as “shocking and distressing.” In a quote of Xi posted by state-owned TV channel CGTN, he does not directly acknowledge a shortfall in food production but describes the coronavirus outbreak as a warning sign: “Though China has reaped a bumper grain harvest for years, it is still necessary to have the awareness of a food security crisis. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic this year has sounded the alarm for us.”

This is the second time that Xi has given instructions on China’s grains within a month, raising eyebrows among China watchers as a sign of a possible food crisis. On July 22, Xi toured cornfields in Jilin Province and cryptically said: “The more risks and challenges we face, the more we need to stabilize agriculture and ensure the safety of grain and major non-staple foods,” reported Beijing Review.

On Wednesday (Aug. 12), the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration announced that its purchases of wheat had dropped by nearly 10 million tons from the previous year. According to the government agency, as of Aug. 5, its purchases of wheat reached 42.86 million tons, a year-on-year drop of 9.38 million tons.

Its purchases of rapeseed reached 706,000 tons, a drop of 51,000 tons over the same period last year. Despite the massive floods of rice fields, purchases of rice reached 2.64 million tons, a year-on-year increase of 126,000 tons.

Meanwhile, food prices in China climbed by about 10 percent in July over the same period last year, while pork prices skyrocketed by 86 percent, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The latter can be attributed to the loss of 180 million pigs, or 40 percent of the national herd, to ASF last year and reports of fresh outbreaks this year following the floods.

The flooding, which started in early June, is continuing in the Yangtze River, Huai River, and Yellow River basins, which are all important grain-producing regions. A total of 27 Chinese provinces have been hit by flooding so far this year, inflicting over 144.4 billion Chinese yuan in property damages.

Another serious problem that threatens China’s food supply is insect infestations. The fall armyworm (FAW), which feasts on corn, has been detected in all but five of China’s provinces, pushing corn prices to five-year highs, despite the release of 1.4 billion bushels of corn from the country’s reserves, reported Forbes.

Another major threat to China’s crops are hordes of locusts which have munched their way across Asia. On July 31, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs ordered the spraying of pesticide and deployment of drones to fight off the crop-chomping insects, which it reported had damaged about 90 square kilometers of cropland over the past month in regions of Yunan Province that border Myanmar, Laos, and Vietnam.

Source: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3986625

The post China facing food shortage after months of flooding, infestations first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Weekly Update

Greetings from Tyler,

This has been a week that history will remember, for several reasons.  A plague of large locusts is consuming the nations of North East Africa.  But that’s not the big story.  The incurable and deadly coronavirus has escaped Wuhan, China and is threatening to become a worldwide pandemic.  Doctors and nurses who recognized the danger of the sickness early, from the standpoint of its lethal nature and the ease with which it is transmitted, were arrested by Chinese authorities for “spreading rumors.”  The doctor credited with getting out an early warning is dead.

A number of cities in China are said to be ghost towns, with every one ordered not to leave home.  You hope they have plenty of food at home and hope no delicacies came from the Wuhan market.  Every report we see has hospital staff in hazmat suits.  Then we hear that the people caring for the sick are also sick unto death.   The things they sell for food at the market in Wuhan, China make us ill at the very thought.  Not only do they sell coyote and fox pups, but bats!  There it is, and since the coronavirus is thought to be an animal virus that has mutated to become a human contagion, bat soup may well be the culprit.

We don’t know if we’re getting the whole story, because the communist Chinese dictatorship appears to be covering up the magnitude of the problem.  Maybe it wouldn’t have gotten to this stage in the first place if they’d dealt with it honestly.  It doesn’t make any sense to report the numbers of sick or dead, because those numbers rely on Chinese reports.  And “truth” is not in their vocabulary.

So, there’s a plague of locusts consuming everything in East Africa’s fertile region.  There’s a pestilence that may well result in the deaths of millions.  It sounds like the end-time plagues may have started, but that’s not the big news either.

This week was the time that the President’s opponents, including nearly the entirety of the media, fervently hoped that he would be convicted in the Senate and removed from office.  The bug-eyed buffoon prosecuting the “case” did his utmost to shame at least a handful in the opposing party to break with the President and vote to remove him.  “You know you can’t trust him!” bug-eyes said over and over again with great emotion, pleading with the Senators to get Trump out of office before he uses foreign interference to win another election later this year.

They weren’t just impeaching him for what he’d allegedly said on the phone call, or what he “intended” to be understood from the conversation, he was being impeached for what he might do because “You know you can’t trust him!”

If it were any ordinary legal or criminal case, it would have been dismissed for lack of evidence before ever seeing a courtroom.  But as we were reminded every day, this wasn’t any ordinary case, it was a political action.  Therefore, normal rules of evidence didn’t apply.  If they had, countless hours of opinions, understandings and suppositions and hearsay from the secure basement of Congress could never have been admitted into the record.  But it gave a boatload of ammo to the political assassins in the media.  Everyone who thought the President had used foreign aid to coerce the president of Ukraine to announce an investigation into “his political opponent” was a brave hero.  Vindman, Sondland, Ambassador Yavonovich, Misko, (Ciaramella, whose name must never be spoken), all employees of the Trump administration were all upstanding public servants for their willingness to risk their employment to oppose the President, even though they served “at his pleasure,” as the Constitution puts it.

Knowing the parties involved, as we do, it’s difficult to imagine Trump thinking he’d need such an advantage in order to deal with the awkward, gaff-laden former Vice President.  But that’s what the media demanded we believe.  Apparently the only thing necessary to avoid scrutiny (at least in the eyes of mainstream news) is to run for high office.  Some of us (including yours truly) are wondering if that’s not the main reason former V. P. Biden decided to throw his hat into the ring in the first place.

After three years of raising the expectations of those who hate our president to a fever pitch, only to see him acquitted of all the wrongdoing they’ve alleged, it is hilarious watching them pretend to be excited about other would-be contenders in the next election.  They’re promoting debates as if they were world-champion prizefights.  Their promos feature percussive explosions as they zoom one oversized face after another into your living room.  Bernie, Booti-whatever, Warren, Biden, in quick succession.  You know this is going to be exciting!  Pretty funny, after seeing these network buffoons having their hindquarters handed to them in real-time after they’d invested three and a half years in an all-out rush to get rid of Trump.  You’d think they could at least come up with a half-hearted apology, but no.

We knew it before, but the last three and a half years have removed any lingering doubt.  Our mainstream media is not trying to inform the public, but rather manipulate what we “know” and believe.  Can you even imagine what it would be like if not for alternative sources like it was in the good ole days?  Even though the public relied on only a handful of newsmen to present us what was important, at least there was some responsibility on their part to leave their personal opinions aside.  That is obviously no longer the case.

Thank goodness for alternative sources.  Thank God for President Trump, and this period of relief from oppressive government agencies.  The mainstream information outlets cannot be trusted, except to manipulate and deceive.  They’re mostly concerned about their contrived grievances, global warming and “gay” rights. The good news is that we’ve seen all the way through them, and will find out what we need to know in spite of them.

Mark

Source: http://www.intercontinentalcog.org/fridayupdates.php

The post Weekly Update from Mark Armstrong – 7 February 2020 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.