Strange signals from China: Xi does not leave the country, and people in panic buy food

“Probably the most striking phenomenon of recent times is the demonstrative and obvious unwillingness of the leader of China, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, Chairman Xi Jinping, to participate in international affairs.

He turned into a leader of the country restricted to travel abroad.

You can still see. The last time he left the country, this is definitely perfect, in January 2020, he went to Myanmar, the former Burma. Almost two years ago.

Not only does he not go anywhere himself, but he also does not accept other politicians.

The last time he received the President of Pakistan in Beijing was in March of the same 2020.

Well, some would say that an epidemic has disrupted normal diplomatic practice. Yes, at the time of the peak, everyone stopped communicating in person and switched to the correspondence form of communication. But international life has recovered.

The leaders of states visit each other, sit down opposite each other, look into each other's eyes and talk.

But not Xi Jinping. He does not receive anyone, does not travel anywhere, and even rarely speaks to anyone on the phone.

Most recently, he honored the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea to speak. This is important, of course, for states, but there are other countries, a conversation with which, perhaps, would make sense.

This marks a fundamental change in China's foreign policy.

Until recently, several years ago, Xi Jinping was the main standard-bearer of international cooperation. Especially during the presidency of Donald Trump, who, on the contrary, under the slogan "America First" withdrew from international agreements, was not interested in international events and almost quarreled with all allies at all.

It was then that Xi Jinping opposed himself to Donald Trump and it seemed to many people: well, here, the Chinese leader is the personification of a modern big politician who is aware of his responsibility for world affairs.

Some five years ago, in Davos, where politicians and economists from all over the world meet, he spoke about the importance of international cooperation.

In the old days, he traveled around the world a lot more American politicians, the same can be counted.

I looked: he visited fourteen countries on average annually and spent about 34 days abroad. This is not only more than President Trump did, but also than his predecessor Obama, also a supporter of international cooperation. Obama spent twenty-five days abroad, and Trump twenty-three days a year.

What happened?

Until recently, Xi Jinping considered it absolutely necessary not only to lobby the interests of the Chinese economy, which, of course, has penetrated the whole world, but also to promote China itself. The ambitious One Belt - One Road program was supposed to make China an accomplice to the economies of almost the entire world.

China was to become the main donor of the developing world. And suddenly everything seemed to stop.

There are several reasons. Probably, not everything went smoothly with this "One Belt - One Road" program. After all, what was meant? China offered generous loans to not very developed countries, assistance in building infrastructure and investments. Many countries were flattered by these offers, and a line was lined up for the Chinese yuan. And then it turned out that not everything is so simple. The Chinese, who have been buying and selling for thousands of years, cannot pass by a penny.

And some states, which have opened their gates wide for the Chinese, are suddenly convinced that the conditions are not very favorable. They received loans, Chinese firms built something with this money, the country cannot pay off, and this property goes to China itself. Fierce clashes and discontent with China began. But this is one side of the matter.

The second side is that Xi Jinping apparently believed that if he and China played such an important role in the world, if the Chinese economy was so important for everyone - for the EU, for North America, then these states would refrain from critical remarks on parts of human rights. And I was wrong. Because no matter how dependent, say, the Europeans on the Chinese economy, there was still criticism in Europe about how China treats Muslims in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, how opposition is dispersed in Hong Kong, and how China is stepping up pressure on Taiwan.

All this sounded rather harsh and, apparently, every year it became more and more unbearable and unbearable for Xi Jinping.

But I believe that the main reason, nevertheless, was something else. Under Xi Jinping, the political climate within China itself has changed. China has become a truly nationalist state.

These nationalist sentiments were spread by official propaganda and engulfed Chinese society. This was a great departure from the tradition of Deng Xiaoping, the father of the Chinese economic miracle that changed the fate of modern China and who created modern China.

... Xi Jinping is not going to leave and it is very important for him to enlist the support of the party apparatus. Of course, no one knows exactly what is happening in the forbidden palace, but it is believed that the plenum will rethink the history of China, new assessments will be given, new tasks will be set. The main thing is that all these are peaceful tasks. It is striking that the plenum is devoted to historical issues - that is, history really determines the present day, ” said Leonid Mlechin .

And here is what Ivan Yakovina says about the processes taking place in the PRC:

“ What are the main problems of the Chinese economy today? The first, of course, is the lack of energy due to the difficulties in supplying coal. In addition, there is a shortage of containers to ship everything that was produced in China to Europe and the United States.

This is especially true before the Christmas season - in Western countries, people buy a lot of gifts and now these gifts simply cannot reach these people, because of this, by the way, inflation is growing very quickly all over the world, because there is a certain shortage of goods like times due to the container crisis.

But the main problem of the Chinese economy is, of course, the real estate sector, since the construction industry is in a severe crisis, now it cannot sell anything due to the continuing demand and the decline in real estate prices, and due to the fact that this industry does not have money, the largest companies do not have any finances at all, banks doubt their solvency and do not give them loans. As a result, the survival of the entire construction industry in China is in question.

But this week, new details emerged: food prices began to rise sharply in China.

Food prices have jumped somewhere by 50%, somewhere by 70%, in some places this food is already in short supply.

And this is very, very serious, especially considering the history of China, where food is a really sore point.

There are huge queues in Chinese grocery stores and markets, first of all, for vegetables, vegetables for the Chinese are super important.

There have not been such queues for decades.

In addition, in online stores, primarily in Alibaba, people rushed to buy canned meat, army rations and pressed biscuits, which, if steamed a little, turns out to be something like bread.

The most popular searches on Alibaba right now are rice, soy sauce, noodles and chili sauce. People are now looking for these basic food products for Chinese cuisine and are shopping with them as actively as possible.

In addition, the leaders of Internet searches in the Chinese version of "Google", let's say, are "a list of supplies for home storage." That is, people go to the store and buy directly from the list what is on this list.

Of course, in China, on this basis, a hundred absolutely unimaginable things are happening on this basis.

Calling things by their proper names, there begins a panic raid of the population on shops, a panic buying of food.

Many observers have the impression that people are preparing for something very bad.

And, of course, the question naturally arises of how did this happen and where did this food panic come from? Why did people rush to buy long-term food in such gigantic quantities?

The answer to this question is no less surprising than the phenomenon itself.

Everything happens on the advice, even on the instruction of the Chinese government itself. You heard everything right: it was the Chinese Communist Party that called on its fellow citizens to form food supplies at home.

To be more precise, it was the Ministry of Commerce of China, it called on the citizens of the country to prepare for possible food disruptions during the coming winter and subsequent spring.

The government called for the formation of food stocks not only for ordinary Chinese, but also for local authorities, which are ordered to accumulate as much as possible serious stocks of long-term storage products.

Agricultural producers and local wholesale and retail trade networks were involved in this work.

Against this background, ordinary people were advised to create food supplies - quote - "for a while", as well as "in case of unforeseen emergencies".

That is, the Chinese government has called on the population and authorities to be prepared for the fact that this winter will be such a difficult time that everyone - or at least many - will need food supplies made at their homes.

Normal ways of producing and distributing food, according to the government, will not work since people are advised to buy food”.