China's pork glut. Desalination at risk in the Gulf. India embarks on its census & Schoenberg's coalition chess.
Great links, images, and reading from Chartbook Newsletter by Adam Tooze
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Hans Wulz, Selbstbildnis, 1946
The winners and losers of the Iran war are not who you might expect
China’s pork glut is driven by the concentration of the industry following the African swine fever
China’s pig prices have plunged to their lowest level in nearly eight years, as the country struggles to deal with a persistent supply glut triggered by the spread of huge industrial farms and a post-holiday drop in meat consumption. Live pigs were selling for 11.05 yuan (US$1.60) per kilogram on average during the third week of March, down 2.9 per cent from the previous week and 28 per cent from a year earlier, data from China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs showed. Prices are now at their lowest level since June 2018, according to financial data provider Wind. Pork meat prices are also on the decline, sinking to 22 yuan per kilogram last week – down 2.1 per cent on the previous week and 16.5 per cent from last year.
The problems in the meat industry are creating a headache for Beijing, as falling pork prices undermine the government’s efforts to stave off deflation. They are also squeezing the country’s millions of pig farmers just as the US-Israel war on Iran pushes up global oil, grain and feed prices, raising their costs. The hog glut was caused by the spread of industrial-scale farms in China’s pork industry over the past few years, which led the swine supply to grow faster than market demand, according to Yao Jingyuan, a former chief economist at China’s National Bureau of Statistics and a special researcher at the State Council’s Counsellors’ Office. China’s pork industry rapidly consolidated after the African swine fever outbreak wiped out many small farms, creating space for large-scale producers to expand. Some firms have even built vast, multi-storey hog farms capable of raising more than 1 million pigs per year. But the facilities have upset the balance in China’s pork market, especially as industrial farming has compromised the quality of meat produced, according to Yao.
Source: SCMP
Will water be decisive in the Gulf war?
Should the war over Iran grind on, water may become as crucial a commodity as oil. The arid Arab countries of the Gulf increasingly rely on desalination, which provides 90% or more of the drinking-water supply for Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, and almost as much for Oman. For Saudi Arabia it is 70%, and roughly 40% in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This has created a “dangerous new bunch of vulnerabilities” for Gulf countries, says Peter Schwartzstein of the Stimson Centre, an American think-tank.
An American diplomatic cable written in 2008 and published by WikiLeaks noted that the Jubail Desalination Plant alone then supplied Riyadh, the kingdom’s capital, with over 90% of its drinking water. If its pipelines or the power infrastructure around it were hammered, the city would have to be evacuated within a week. If that were to happen, the memo concluded, “the current structure of the Saudi government could not exist”. Since 2006 the Gulf states have spent around $53bn to offset this risk. Saudi Arabia now gets roughly 40% of its desalinated water from smaller facilities that are more spread out. Abu Dhabi and Qatar are building up strategic reserves. Thanks to these investments, most Gulf countries have a modicum of protection. Even if Iran did hit the plants, in most countries some drinking water would continue to flow. But huge gaps remain. Most of the Gulf’s desalinated water comes from a small number of plants. Storage is patchy: the UAE aims to have reserves equivalent to just two days of normal consumption by 2036, which could be stretched to around a month by strict rationing. Smaller states like Bahrain are even more exposed.
Source: The Economist
India is embarking on the world’s biggest census with huge potential implications
India began the first count of its population in more than a decade at the start of April. The inaugural digital census is expected to take around a year to complete as millions of officials endeavor to survey well over a billion people. Billed as the world’s largest ever census, the mammoth bureaucratic task will stretch from India’s dense megacities to its small, remote villages. Alongside collecting typical data such as the makeup of households and employment details, the government is attempting for the first time since 1931 to successfully tally citizens’ caste — hierarchical and inherited social groupings that are deeply embedded in Indian culture, and influence access to education, jobs and other opportunities.
The census comes at a crucial moment for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, as it seeks to sustain the country’s rapid economic growth while addressing stark wealth inequality. The fresh data could help refine the targeting of public spending and welfare programs, to ensure they reach the people and areas that have been left behind. The government is deploying around 3.3 million enumerators — roughly equivalent to the population of Uruguay — to go door to door and ask 33 questions. The answers will be recorded digitally on a smartphone app. People can also enter the information on this portal themselves before census officials visit to verify the details. The survey is expected to be wrapped up by March next year for most of the country, and by October for snowbound regions such as Ladakh.
The government estimates the census will cost more than 117 billion rupees ($1.3 billion). The Indian government has been crafting policy, setting budget priorities and distributing welfare using outdated national statistics. Allocations of subsidized food such as rice and wheat, for example, are based on the results of the last census in 2011, when 1.21 billion people were recorded. The United Nations estimates that the population has now topped 1.46 billion. … The British tabulated all castes in censuses conducted from 1881 to 1931, the last of which recorded more than 4,000 groups. But independent India stopped the practice from its first census in 1951, as successive governments said that focusing on caste risked perpetuating social divisions. The once-in-a-decade surveys have counted Dalits — officially classified as Scheduled Castes — as well as indigenous communities categorized as Scheduled Tribes. Some of those past censuses have also tallied people from disadvantaged groups known as Other Backward Classes. The new census will count every caste.
Source: Bloomberg
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Hans Wulz, Die Befreiten, 1941
Moped v. Miura
Arnold Schoenberg’s Coalition Chess
Coalition Chess requires four players, who take the colours Black, Yellow, Red and Green. Schoenberg made a set of pieces for the game himself, which are pictured at the head of this blog post (the image is from the Schoenberg Center’s page for the 2004 exhibition). The pieces are all named after modern military personnel, weaponry and vehicles.
You can see from the table that only two of the players have Kings. In this respect, Schoenberg’s game reflects his fundamentally binary perception of the First World War as a conflict between two sides (of which he was, at least initially, a patriotic and enthusiastic supporter of the Habsburg Imperial Monarchy). Also significant is the fact that it is the potential allies — the powers without Kings — who have the most powerful pieces, the Planes and Submarines, whose moves double the range of the chess Knight in the case of the Plane, and combine the powers of Knight and Queen in the case of the Submarine:
Source: Robert Samuels in Chess and Music
Hans Wulz, The granite quarry, 1931
