Malnutrition in China

[tranquilium]

1. Malnutrition is still a problem in China. While China is certainly loads better than other developing nations, it is still a developing nation and one that covers vast geographical area. Notice that the article is on malnutrition in child living in some middle and western province. These province are historically poor due to lack of infrastructure, especially in transportation. This limits their growth and thus their development lack behind the rest of China.

2. On the remedy part, I do believe we have covered in this forum several times already in China's large investment into infrastructure developing in middle and western regions. For example, the "silk-road" or transcontinental railroad project is one such project aimed to boost economic growth in western and middle portion of China.


Here is the thing though, China is one of the few nations in the world that showed rapid improvement in its calorie intake per capita ranking in the past few decades.
Comparing Current and 1970 Farm Prosperity: China and the Current Prosperity | farmdocdaily.illinois.edu
This is because calorie intake or hunger are closely associated with economic growth. As one of the few (probably the only one) developing nations that is actually transitioning into developed status, China's hunger problem is fading instead staying the same like it was in many other countries.

 

[VCheng]

Malnutrition is a problem of trust and a lack of educational knowledge. It has NOTHING to do with our government inability and our people not caring, or desire, has ambition, and DETERMINATION to eliminate poverty and malnutrition COMPLETELY. We have set a goal for our people that we want ZERO PERCENTAGE Poverty in the 21st century. We have increased our fight on poverty and billion of dollar were spent annually to set up schools, hospitals, and such. In fact, our development goal right now is to develop the Western region to the fullest extend of our ability. The lack of water and land erosion are the MAIN problem we are trying to tackle. Give me a break with your nonsense. We don't need the world to feel sympathy for our people. We do it ourselves.

Of course I agree with you that the government of China is trying hard and well to tackle malnutrition, but given the poor state of knowledge among the people, specially in the rural areas, it still has a lot of work to do. And I will stress again that poverty reduction is a separate issue than improving nutrition, given that less poverty helps with affording food, generally, but it also requires other things.

 

[ephone]

China is still a developing country and there are indeed quite some poor people left behind.

We indeed have at least 1.4 billion people. With that big population, even 1% is 14 million.

So if we say 99% Chinese are without that malnutrition problem, we will then at least have 14 million people that have that malnutrition problem.

BTW, we China never toast ourselves as superpower. So do not need the title for your own insidious cause.

China indeed has malnutrition problem on both ends: over and under...

In addition, of course China has a lot of problems that need tackle.

That is why China is a developing country and will remains so for quite some time.

We do not only have Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, but also have Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu and Guizhou....

In China, we have the first world, second world and third world economy coexisting at the same time.

 

[IsaacNewton]

This problem is not unique to china.

In US, there are 50 million Americans living on food stamp, and 3 million that is flat out homeless and starving.

China's problem can't really be fixed easily. The poor area are also the water poor region, so it is not attractive for industries to move there and farmers have a hard time growing adequate food supply. China need to invest more in water technology, make more plants that can convert sea water to fresh water, better mechanism to harvest rain water in the water rich regions of the south, more pipelines/water canal that can bring water to the water poor regions of the north near Gobi desert.

The south-north water transfer project was recently completed, hopefully Beijing can alleviate some of the water shortage problem. The next step is to clean the yellow river (not exactly easy considering how it was undrinkable for 2000+ years).