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From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Orphaned Response
Message-ID: <7800683@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 15-Nov-85 02:02:00 EST
Article-I.D.: inmet.7800683
Posted: Fri Nov 15 02:02:00 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 26-Nov-85 21:56:46 EST
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Nf-From: inmet!janw    Nov 15 02:02:00 1985


The following is from "China, Alive in a Bitter Sea", by Fox Butterfield,
Bantam Books, p. 15. The data applies to late 1970's

> > For recent Western Studies show that food consumption per  capita
> > is  actually  only  about what it was in the mid-1950s, and, more
> > surprisingly, no better than in the 1930s, before World War  Two.
> > 
> > These  studies  suggest  that the average daily calorie supply in
> > China is  between  2,000  and  2,100  per  person.  Two  thousand
> > calories a day is the level of India, 2,100 is the norm in Pakis-
> > tan. Americans eat an average of 3,240 calories a day.  
> > 
> > But what makes these figures worse is that three fourths  of  the
> > protein  in  the  Chinese diet and five sixth of the calories are
> > derived from food grains like rice, wheat and corn,  rather  than
> > from  other richer and more varied sources like meat, fish, eggs,
> > vegetables, or sugar. In Asia only Bangladesh and  Laos  approach
> > these proportions.                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> > 
> > Uneven distribution has compounded this shortage of food.  A Com-
> > munist  periodical  in  Hong  Kong disclosed in 1978, while I was
> > there, that the  annual  grain  ration  of  200  million  Chinese
> > peasants  was less than 330 pounds a year.  "That is to say", the
> > journal said, "they are living in a state of semistarvation".
                                                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^