The World Needs For China to Rejuvenate its Plant-Based Diet--UPDATED

I have mentioned before that as China gets richer, the population has been demanding more meat in the diet, especially pork. While the pigs are mainly grown in China, a lot of the food for those pigs is grown elsewhere and imported to China. Since nearly one in five humans lives in China, this is a big deal. The environmental impact of growing food for the pigs and the climate impact from pig waste all are huge problems going forward. 

There may be hope in sight, however, given the prospect of new innovations in plant-based diets in China. The story is from The Economist's 1843 magazine, and I thank my older son, Professor John Weeks, Jr., for pointing it out to me.

In the last few years there has been a rush in demand for vegan and vegetarian foods in Western countries. Much of it is coming from flexitarians – people who have not renounced meat completely but want to cut their consumption. To satisfy them, companies are developing products that look, taste and feel as close as possible to meat and dairy dishes – most famously a plant-based burger made by Impossible Foods that appears to bleed like a rare beef patty.

Amid this flurry of innovation in the West, it’s worth remembering that the Chinese have been using plant-based foods to mimic meat for hundreds of years. In the time of the Tang dynasty (AD618-907), an official hosted a banquet at which he served convincing replicas of pork and mutton dishes made from vegetables; in the 13th century, diners in the capital of the southern Song dynasty (Lin’an, now Hangzhou), had a wide choice of meat-free restaurants, including those that specialised in Buddhist vegetarian cuisine.

The tradition is still alive in contemporary China. In Shanghai, most delicatessens sell rolled-tofu “chicken” and roast “duck” made from layered tofu skin. Restaurants offer stir-fried “crabmeat”, a strikingly convincing simulacrum of the original made from mashed carrot and potato flavoured with rice vinegar and ginger. Elsewhere, Chinese food manufacturers produce a range of imitation meat and seafood products, including slithery “chicken’s feet” concocted from konnyaku yam and “shark’s fin” made from translucent strands of bean-thread noodle.

My wife and I gave up meat 30 years ago when we got our first German Shepherd. It was an animal rights decision, not an environmental impact decision, but over time two important things have happened: (1) our knowledge of the environmental impact (not just the inherent cruelty) of growing animals to kill and eat them has expanded exponentially; and (2) the volume and quality of plant-based diets has expanded exponentially. This latter aspect is a great trend not just for China, but for the entire planet. 

UPDATE: A special report today from Reuters discusses the ecological damage being done in Brazil as it tries to meet China's demand for meat and grain:

Deforestation in the region has slowed from the early 2000s, when Brazil’s soy boom was gaining steam. Still, farmers continue to plow under vast stretches of the biome, propelled largely by Chinese demand for Brazilian meat and grain. The Asian nation is Brazil’s No. 1 buyer of soybeans to fatten its own hogs and chickens. China is also a major purchaser of Brazilian pork, beef and poultry to satisfy the tastes of its increasingly affluent consumers.

Rising trade tensions between China and the United States have only deepened that connection. Brazil’s soybean exports by value to China are up 18 percent through the first seven months of the year as Chinese buyers have canceled tens of millions of dollars’ worth of contracts with U.S. suppliers.

A Female Impressionist Makes a Demographic Impression

Today's Washington Post carries a very interesting story about a female Impressionist painter from the 19th century with whom I was not familiar--as the writer assumes most of us are not.

Berthe Morisot painted women, mostly, and adolescent girls. Her delight in the way blades of light were scattered by their pinafores and ribbons, pounced off furniture and coaxed bright color from flowers could not mask the sense she developed — and kept close, like a secret dispatch — of life’s brutal transience.

It’s easy to overlook how radical Morisot’s apparently nonchalant brushwork was in the late 1870s. Her work’s lack of finish conveys, like no other Impressionist, a sense of evanescence. We do not live long, her paintings attest. We hesitate, like teenagers, in thresholds. We know almost nothing.

She was an incredibly talented painter in a world that had very little interest in or tolerance for female artists. So, the gender equity issues are very strong in this story. But the other demographic impression the writer wants you to get from this article is the role in life still being played by high mortality as recently as the late 19th century.

Conditions in Paris were harsh. Morisot’s health suffered, and at the end of 1870, she contracted pneumonia. Her studio was destroyed by the Prussian bombardment, which may well have concentrated her mind: Mere months later, as the Paris Commune was getting established, Morisot confessed to Edma that painting was now “the sole purpose” of her existence. Finding buyers for her paintings, she wrote, was now all she cared about.

The years passed, but the shadow of death never lifted. Morisot lost her father in 1874 and, over the following decade, her mother, two brothers-in-law, her mother-in-law, a close confidante (the female sculptor Marcello) and the man one feels sure she loved above all others, Manet.

In 1895, Julie [her daughter] became ill. While caring for her, Morisot contracted pulmonary congestion. “My little Julie, I love you as I die,” she wrote in a farewell note. “I will love you when I’m dead; please don’t cry. . . . I would have liked to survive till your wedding. . . . Work and be good as you have always been; you haven’t made me sad once in your little life.”

For young people growing up in the 21st century this may all sound like ancient history, but in the scope of human history Morisot's life haunted by gender inequity and death in 19th century Paris was only a short time ago.  We have come a long way since then.

Gen Z about to Outnumber Millennials Globally

Thanks to Todd Gardner for the link to a story in Bloomberg about their analysis of data from the United Nations Population Division in which they find that, at the global level, members of Generation Z are projected to outnumber Millennials by next year. Here we have demographic metabolism on display:

Gen Z will comprise 32 percent of the global population of 7.7 billion in 2019, nudging ahead of millennials, who will account for a 31.5 percent share, based on Bloomberg analysis of United Nations data, and using 2000/2001 as the generational split.

Does that matter? With social, political, and economic changes taking place at a pretty rapid pace it almost certainly affects you to be growing up in a "different world" than previous generations.

Gen Zers have never known a non-digital world and have grown up amid events such as the "war on terror" and Global Recession. "The key factor that differentiated these two groups, other than their age, was an element of self-awareness versus self-centeredness," according to “Rise of Gen Z: New Challenge for Retailers,” a report by Marcie Merriman, an executive director at Ernst & Young LLP. Millennials were "more focused on what was in it for them. They also looked to others, such as the companies they did business with, for solutions, whereas the younger people naturally sought to create their own solutions."

There are two things to keep in mind in thinking about this generational transition. The first is that it is occurring earliest in developing countries that have higher birth rates and thus a younger age structure, as you can see in the map below:

And the second point is that not everyone agrees on the exact definition of the generations.

For this Bloomberg comparison, millennials were defined as people born in 1980 through 2000, with Gen Z classified as anyone born starting in 2001 -- at least until the next meaningful cohort emerges. The U.S. Census Bureau also bookends the generations at the end of 2000.

William Strauss and Neil Howe, American historians and authors who first coined the term "millennials," use 1982 and 2004 as the cutoff years. The Pew Research Center defines those born in 1981 through 1996 as millennials, a time-frame also used by Ernst & Young in the survey Merriman wrote about.

Finally, note that there is money to be made in these kinds of comparisons for those who provide advice based on demographic trends--this is a great example of applied demography.

Horrors at the Borders

The unbearable stories of children being still separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border just because they were trying to gain asylum in this country continue unabated. Over the weekend a plaintive story of a previous migrant was published in the NYTimes, and at least that story seems to be associated with a united outcome. 

But while our own border horrors continue, there are others erupting elsewhere. Venezuela is imploding and people want to get out. Who can blame them. The Guardian provides some recent accounts:

More than half a million Venezuelans have crossed into Ecuador this year as part of one of the largest mass migrations in Latin American history, the United Nations said on Friday. That is nearly 10 times the number of migrants and refugees who attempted to cross the Mediterranean into Europe over the same period. The International Organization for Migration this week announced that 59,271 migrants and refugees tried to reach Europe by sea between January and August, with most coming to Spain, Italy or Greece.

The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, said a daily average of up to 3,000 Venezuelan men, women and children had entered Ecuador this year but that the already “massive influx” was now accelerating further.

More than a million Venezuelans have crossed into Colombia since the exodus began in 2015. Others have fanned out across Latin American and Caribbean nations including Mexico, the Dominican Republic and Trindad and Tobago. Tens of thousands have hiked into Brazil down a remote Amazon road known as the Hunger Highway.

As is always true, these migrants are creating xenophobic reactions in the places to which they are going. It doesn't matter that they are culturally very similar to the people in the countries to which they are fleeing--they are still different, and that causes problems. So far, however, I have not seen news stories suggesting that any of these migrants out of Venezuela have been separated from their parents. Let's hope that horrible idea doesn't spread.

China Now Pushes For More Children

A story this weekend in the NYTimes discusses new moves by the Chinese government to encourage a rise in the birth rate, since the continued low birth rate is leading to a rapidly aging and eventually declining population. The one-child policy has been scrapped in favor of a two-child ideal, but Chinese couples are not hopping on the baby wagon in great numbers.

Now, keep in mind that fertility was already declining pretty rapidly in China before the implementation of the one-child policy back in the late 1970s, so the government may have helped to lower the birth rate, but its nasty, repressive policies were not the underlying cause of the low birth rate. This is at least one reason why lifting the one-child policy hasn't yet encouraged an increase in the birth rate. So, it may be that the government is going to get nasty again.

The new campaign has raised fear that China may go from one invasive extreme to another in getting women to have more children. Some provinces are already tightening access to abortion or making it more difficult to get divorced. 

“To put it bluntly, the birth of a baby is not only a matter of the family itself, but also a state affair,” the official newspaper People’s Daily said in an editorial this week, prompting widespread criticism and debate online.

A plan to end the two-child limit was floated during the legislative session in Beijing last spring and now appears to be under consideration with other measures, the National Health Commission said in a statement.

Experts say the government has little choice but to encourage more births. China — the world’s most populous nation with more than 1.4 billion people — is aging quickly, with a smaller work force left to support a growing elderly population that is living longer. Some provinces have already reported difficulties meeting pension payments.

It is unclear whether lifting the two-child limit now will make much of a difference. As in many countries, educated women in Chinese cities are postponing childbirth as they pursue careers. Young couples are also struggling with economic pressures, including rising housing and education costs.

It is my hope that these and related issues are being discussed among demographers attending this year's American Sociological Association meetings in Philadelphia. I'm sorry I can't be there to contribute.