Numbers, Statistics and avoiding "Total Havoc"

Statistics are pretty fungible in most countries but China's numbers (as I have remarked in the past) always seem particularly squishy. As well as getting your numbers right, releasing them at the right moment is also critical, it seems. Hot on the heels (or trotters) of the scary news late last week that meat prices vaulted 50 per cent year on year last month (see below) comes the news that, hey presto, pork prices (which were the main component of the rise) have suddenly fallen 11 per cent "early this month," according the venerable South China Morning Post. In a confusing piece (It's behind a paywall but try anyway), the Post gives out this good news as well as a raft of other numbers. The dreaded Blue Ear disease, which had been ravaging some herds though not nearly the numbers people thought, is now going down, kind of. Numbers of live pigs in stock rose 3.9 per cent on the month, meanwhile. Pigs ready for sale rose 9.9 per cent from the year-ago level and the number of sows in stock rose 3.8 per cent in August from a month earlier.

But wait. Just when you thought it was ok to eat bacon again, comes the news, hot from the World Pork Convention in Nanjing, that rural pork consumption (20 kilos a head) is going to go up, up, up, up and may someday hit the piggy levels achieved by the Taiwanese (70 kilos a head). Thoroughly muddled? In a state of "total havoc'? Fear not. This brilliant spot by the gentleman at the beijingnewspeak blog (though he seems to have been "harmonized, so if you are in China, time to get on your proxy and ride), in the venerable South China Morning Post will clarify everything and l;eave you in a state of peace and, of course, harmony that passeth all understanding. Literally.