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CHINA'S RISING FOOD PRICES CAUSE PAIN

Jodi Xu/Beijing

Time, Thursday, Apr. 17, 2008

Sixty-seven year old Beijing housewife Wang Litan faced an agonizing choice recently: Wang requires pain-killers to manage chronic back pain caused by diabetes, but the steep rise in China's food prices has forced her to choose between back pain and hunger pangs. "I need to keep taking diabetes medicines to stay alive, but I have traded in pain killers for meat," she says. "This is the time that I will have to live with some pain."

China's National Bureau of Statistics announced this week that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) in the first quarter of this year was 8% higher than in the same period last year. Food prices, the biggest factor in spiraling inflation, rose 21%. "China's economy has entered a period of serious inflation and it is more worrisome that the rising CPI doesn't look like slowing down anytime soon," comments He Fan, an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "Things are bound to get worse before getting better."

And Wang feels the pain, in her back, and in her purse. The retired Beijing Bus Factory worker cooks for her husband, son, daughter-in-law and granddaughter, explains, "I used to spend about one thousand yuan ($143) a month on food; now it has doubled."

(...) [artículo aquí]