There’s an idiomatic express that seems to have fallen out of common usage: “What does that have to do with the price of Tea in China?” The phrase indicates that they speaker has no interest or use in the information you’re conveying. This video has me curious as to what the price of one packet of dried ramen noodles goes for in China.
China seems to be having an unenviable bout of stagflation, with both unemployment and inflation rising at the same time. (So, for that matter, are we, though not as severe, and one which our elites controlling economic data seem determined to hide as much as possible.) In the video, people are complaining that packaged ramen noodles are going up from 2.8 to 3 yuan. (An online Chinese retail price tool puts it at a statistically indistinguishable 2.98 yuan.) At official exchange rates, 3 yuan is about 41¢.
Back in the days of being a poor college student, I could generally eat on 20 dollars a week. Rice, spaghetti, luncheon meat sandwiches, hot dogs and ramen were regular staples. Good ramen (Maruchan or Top Ramen) could readily be found five for $1, and the generic brand (back then they had literal generic brands with plain white packaging) could even be had for 15¢ a pop.
Those days, of course, are long gone. An individual pack of Maruchan Ramen is now 30¢ at Walmart, or 31¢ at HEB.
I had always had the vague impression that China exported ramen to the U.S., but Maruchan is actually packaged just south of San Antonio in Von Ormy.
It’s surprising to me that ramen, the college student survival staple, is actually more expensive in China than here, despite average Americans being much wealthier than average Chinese.
It must really, really suck to be poor in China right now…
Tags: China, Economics, food, inflation, San Antonio, stagflation, video, Von Ormy
Uhmmm… Pre-packaged instant noodles aren’t necessarily a “staple” of the Chinese diet; they’re a convenience food akin to McDonalds.
I’m not so sure that this is really a valid “thing”, in terms of judging the “quality of life”, in terms of food affordability. Most of the actual Chinese people I know have been pretty disdainful of things like Ramen, which are seen as imported luxury items, not necessities. Though, that could well be generational, too. I don’t know that many ethnic Chinese that left after the economy improved.
World wheat prices have come down quite a bit from their February 2022 spike. They are lower now than on the eve of the Russo-Ukraine War, but gradually trending upwards from their recent (March 2024) lows:
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/wheat
Ramen prices should not be higher now than in mid 2022.
National Bureau of Statistics of China’s official price statistics show overall food prices declining by 2.7% YoY, but you can never trust NBSC statistics. They do show a moderate upwards price trend, but nothing like the scorching price growth we have experienced recently in the U.S.:
https://tradingeconomics.com/china/food-inflation
They predict 0.5% YoY price growth by the end of the quarter, and 2.2% YoY price growth by the end of this year.
On of my hobbies is dumpster diving. As I live less than a mile from a residential community college, this hobby is often quite productive. As each long semester draws to a close, students start tossing more and more air-tight sealed, shelf-stable foodstuffs, including ramen. I’d rapidly run out of storage space if I harvested all the ramen (entire unopened boxes of individual packets or cups of the stuff) that they toss.
I don’t generally care for it though, so I just harvest the canned goods instead. Plus the cartons of unbroken eggs. And unopened cans of soda. And boxes and boxes of individually sealed protein and granola bars and PopTarts.
“Most of the actual Chinese people I know have been pretty disdainful of things like Ramen, which are seen as imported luxury items,..”
In September 2019, Donald Trump announced a 10% tariff on Chinese goods. In response, China aggressively devalued their currency in an attempt to support their export market. This meant that China would pay more for its imports. Consequently, Ramen noodles became more costly.
Instant noodles are not unique. All imported commodities were likewise affected.
Cement became more expensive. To offset this additional expense, contractors added “fillers” to the concrete pour. This yielded the odious Tofu Dreg. Buildings began to fall down within a few short years of being constructed.
It should be evident that the products China exports are no longer available for domestic consumption. This creates domestic shortcomings, which drives up prices as they pay more for the products they import. Net result: increased poverty.
The poor are not eating Ramen noodles but the comparatively affluent are. They will have to restrict their consumption of imported goods. How long will the Mandarins tolerate this? Stay tuned.
“On[e] of my hobbies is dumpster diving. As I live less than a mile from a residential community college, this hobby is often quite productive.”
Take all the loot you can get. College students obtained loan forgiveness, which will require you and me to repay. It is only fair that you should receive some small consideration in return.
“Ramen prices should not be higher now than in mid 2022.”
Even you must realize why the Chinese pay more for wheat (and Ramen noodles) that they did in 2018.
I’m pretty sure Chinese use of substandard and adulterated concrete predates the Trump Administration by quite a bit…
“[A]dulterated concrete predates the Trump Administration by quite a bit…”
Of course—the buildings did not fall down after four years. The Trump tariffs contributed to the real estate collapse because the price paid to build an apartment could not cover the increased costs of imported concrete.
Consequently, contractors had to implement numerous costs-cutting strategies, which resulted in a substandard product. For the marginal provider, even this strategy would be insufficient and the so the project would have to be left unfinished..
Admittedly, Tofu Dreg predates Trump but China’s response to the tariffs resulted in insolvency for many in the construction business and financial loss for all those Chinese investors who had been riding the real estate bubble.
I’m too lazy to do more than skim everything, but I gather that Chinese concrete is adulterated with Ramen noodles?
Read carefully, Chinese concrete is adulterated with tofu!
According to the World Bank, Chinese exports of Portland cement were 7.4 billion kg, which was 3rd highest in 2018. By 2020, that number had fallen precipitously, to <30 million kg, which was #23 for that year.
What happened? Devaluation ought to have made exports more attractive and moved China to #1 or 2.
Instead, imports became more expensive and Chinese production had to make up for the shortcomings if construction activities were to continue. The 2019 tariffs had a disproportionate impact on the Chinese housing market.
It ain’t just China, either…
Korea, circa 1991-ish, Hangju Bridge collapse. Friend of mine was on the old bridge when the new one that was then under construction… Fell apart, basically because “cheap concrete”.
If you went walking around construction sites in Seoul during those years, you could find a dozen violations of common sense at every one of them… Stuff like pulling forms off of concrete columns supporting 8-story buildings to discover that the concrete they dropped into the forms three stories up didn’t fill the form, and you could see through the base of the column to count the rebar… While watching an old guy with a piece of plywood, a trowel, and a bag of soda/beer cans filling the voids and then layering a coating of wet cement over the top…
I was unsurprised when that department store collapsed in Seoul a few years later, and I was also unsurprised to find out that the swimming pool they put in on the top floor had never been engineered, permitted, or inspected… The owner just did it.
“Tofu dreg” construction is endemic across the region; standards are routinely ignored, and it’s a cultural thing relating to the fatalism built into the assumptions at the root of their cultures. “If it’s going to happen, it will happen… No sense in trying to get off the “X”, it’ll happen anyway…”
Lots of Korean contractors go bankrupt building for the US Army in Korea… They see the contracts and all the money, fail to realize that the contracts will actually be enforced, and then discover that they can’t cut the traditional corners.
Friend of mine was an Army construction inspector, and one of the first things he discovered upon arrival was that his predecessor had been stateside for most of his tour on emergency leave due to family issues… So, the inspecting hadn’t gotten done, at all. On several major projects. He had a lot of work to do, catching up, and dealing with the shady Korean contractors… Not all were shady, but… Jesus. Some of them…
Case in point: Major hanger renovation at Camp Humphreys. There’s asbestos in all the interior surface coatings, so there had to be an asbestos abatement plan. There wasn’t one on-site, and apparently, had never been produced. No safety standards were in place, no respirators, no ventilation, no nothing. He reads the contractor the riot act, tells him he has a week to produce a plan and implement it.
Comes the day, contractor says “I have number one plan… Asbestosis take five year to develop, yes?”
My buddy nods his head, wondering where this is going…
“Average lifespan Korean construction worker 55 year, yes?”
OK, OK… Interesting fact, but…
“All of my worker on project over age 50… Asbestosis? No problem…”
Same contractor later had a guy fall off scaffold from three stories up. He was already on probation for other violations (like, no safety harnesses…), and instead of calling the base medical services, he loads the guy who fell into the back of a bongo truck and is taking him out the gate to a local hospital… My buddy drives up on the site, sees the blood trail leading off down the road towards the gate, and goes “Oh, crap…”, follows it, finds the bongo truck stuck in traffic at the gate, pool of blood underneath it, and the injured guy covered up in the back of the truck with tarps and drop cloths… Not a single thing done in the way of first aid. My friend drops everything, pulls out his vehicle’s first aid kit and goes to work while getting the GI on the gate guard to call for an ambulance. The Korean worker survived, his boss got fined out the wazoo, and he was back at work wearing several casts within less than a month. Three-story fall onto concrete…
I have it to understand that construction standards and code compliance have drastically improved since those days, but… Back then, it was literally the Wild West. As I said, it’s a combination of Confucian/Buddhist cultural influence and a general sort of “If it is to be, it is to be…” mentality. Safety and prevention just are not a (or, were…) not a part of the culture.
Kirk, it’s probably worth pointing out that, while it’s largely before my time, I’ve seen evidence that some of that sort of fatalism was present in the US, too.
A RiffTrax short, “Six Murderous Beliefs,” from 1955. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Brq25Bh9xE