Recently The New York Times reported the following:
What Plunging Pork Prices Say About China’s Economy (1/2)
A key measure of inflation in China, they hit a 16-year
low, driven by anemic consumer spending and an oversupply of hogs.
The NYT - By Catie Edmondson - Reporting from Seoul - Li You contributed research.
May 28, 2026, 12:00 a.m. ET
Sun Haoyu, a hog farmer in Dalian, in northern China’s
Liaoning Province, first noticed pork prices beginning to tumble late last
year.
With 3,000 hogs to care for, Mr. Sun said, he had “no choice but to tough it out,” relying entirely on loans and borrowed money to keep his operation afloat. But prices kept plummeting, and last month they hit a 16-year low. Now, across his region, many small farms are on the brink of collapse.
“Many hog farmers can no longer hold out,” Mr. Sun said in an interview. “After all that backbreaking work raising hogs, we can barely afford the feed anymore.”
China’s plunging pork prices are more than an agricultural problem. In a country where the commodity is treated as a bellwether of inflation, the decline is an ominous sign for the economy.
Not long ago, pork prices were soaring after an epidemic of swine fever devastated the nation’s hogs. That prompted Beijing to ramp up production, creating a glut just as Chinese consumers were looking to save rather than spend.
The pork industry is another casualty of China’s economic slowdown. The property market is in a yearslong slump, dragging down spending, including at restaurants, a big driver of pork sales. Construction activity has also weakened, reducing demand for pork, long a staple for workers on building sites, according to a report from Nomura, the Japanese bank.
“The construction site workers and then dining out are the two cohorts that we see have a higher pork consumption,” Hannah Liu, a China economist at Nomura, said in an interview. “When we see a collapse from these two cohorts, we definitely see demand crater.”
China has endured years of deflation across much of the economy, and pork prices are down 39 percent over the last four years, according to data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics. That deflationary trend began to reverse only in recent months, when rising energy costs from the war in Iran pushed up prices.
While the government has sought to boost major pork producers, offering them heavily subsidized bank loans and credit to expand, smaller farmers like Mr. Sun have received far less assistance.
Even with government support, the industry’s biggest players are struggling. Wens Foodstuff Group, one of China’s biggest hog producers, saw profits fall 43 percent last year. The company said prices for its pigs in April fell about 38 percent from a year earlier.
(to be continued)
Translation
豬肉價格暴跌揭示中國經濟的哪些問題（1/2）
作為衡量中國通漲的關鍵指標，豬肉價格跌至16年來的最低點，主要原因是消費支出疲軟和生豬供應過剩
來自中國北部遼寧省大連市的養豬戶Sun Haoyu，去年年底首次注意到豬肉價格開始暴跌。
Sun先生說，他要養3,000頭生豬， “別無選擇，只能咬牙堅持” ，完全依靠貸款和借來的錢來維持生計。但價格持續下跌，上個月跌至16年來的最低點。現在，在他所在的地區，許多小型養豬場都瀕臨倒閉。
Sun先生在接受採訪時說: “很多養豬戶已經撐不下去了” ， “養豬這麼辛苦，我們現在連飼料都快買不起了。”
中國豬肉價格暴跌不只是農業問題。在這個將豬肉價格視為通貨膨脹風向標的國家，豬肉價格的下跌對經濟來說是一個不祥之兆。
不久前，一場非洲豬瘟疫情重創了中國的生豬養殖業，導致豬肉價格飆升。這促使北京方面加大產量，造成了豬肉過剩，而此時中國消費者正傾向儲蓄而非消費。
豬肉產業是中國經濟放緩的另一個受害者。房地產市場持續低迷多年，拖累了包括餐飲在內的消費支出，而餐飲業是豬肉銷售的重要驅動力。根據日本野村證券的報告顯示，建築活動也已減弱，導致對豬肉的需求下降，而豬肉長期以來一直是建築工地工人的主要食物來源。
野村證券中國經濟學家Hannah Liu在接受採訪時表示：“建築工地工人和外出就餐者是豬肉消費量較高的兩個群體。一旦這兩個群體的消費量下降，我們確實看到需求大幅下降。”
中國經濟多年來一直處於通貨緊縮狀態，根據中國國家統計局數據顯示，過去四年豬肉價格下跌了39%。直到最近幾個月，隨著伊朗戰爭導致能源成本上漲，豬肉價格才開始回升，通貨趨勢才有逆轉。
儘管政府一直致力於扶持大型豬肉生產商，為其提供高額補貼的銀行貸款和信貸以擴大生產規模，但像Sun先生這樣的小農戶得到的幫助卻少得多。
即使有政府的支持，產業巨頭們也舉步維艱。中國最大的生豬生產商之一Wens食品集團去年的利潤下降了43%。該公司表示，4月生豬價格比去年下跌了約38%。
（待續）
