Instant Noodles Hit the Skids!

[Randy W]

in the (Singapore) Strait Times

Progress is wiping out instant noodles in China

http://www.straitstimes.com/sites/default/files/articles/2016/10/03/ST_20161003_BLGINSTANTK7ND_2634040.jpg

Between 2003 and 2008, annual instant-noodle sales expanded to US$7.1 billion from US$4.2 billion.

But just as China's economy has slowed, so too has its appetite for instant noodles. Last month, Tingyi - China's biggest noodle maker - was removed as a component of Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index after seeing its noodle profits drop 60 per cent. China's instant-noodle sales are down 6.75 per cent this year, the fourth consecutive year of decline.

The first problem is demographics. China's instant-noodle makers grew in parallel with an economic boom that was fuelled by the migration of low-cost workers from the countryside. But China's working-age population has been in decline since 2010 and, last year, the migrant population fell for the first time in 30 years. With more workers staying home, the incentive - and desire - to eat a prepacked bowl of noodles was likely to decline, and it has.

 

 

[Allon]

The one child/one family policy is costing China its labor force. I am reading a great book on the subject:

 

One Child: The Story of China's Most Radical Experiment. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt by Mei Fong.

 

What we fail to understand is that China’s rapid economic growth has had little to do with its population-planning curbs. Indeed, the policy is imperiling future growth because it rapidly created a population that is too old, too male, and, quite possibly, too few. More people, not less, was one of the reasons for China’s boom.

Some very sad stories about displaced people from rural to city, homelessness, and especially joblessness. China may well be declining rather than growing.