With no ringleaders to punish to scare the crowd, China is struggling to cope with student boycott of school canteen food due to price increases. Over 1,000 students at a high school in Shengzhou, Zhejiang Province, were refusing to have their meals at the school canteen in protest after the prices were raised, reported China’s international newspaper Global Times online Dec 2. It said the boycott had led to economic losses of tens of thousands of yuan for the school, citing the local Qianjiang Evening News Dec 2.The week before, the cafeteria of Shengzhou No. 1 High School had announced its decision to raise its prices for dishes. The next day, the price of meat dishes was raised by one yuan and those containing meat were raised by 0.5 yuan. Following this, many pupils started bringing food from home or ordering takeout; some simply skipped lunch.

The report said teachers were sent to count the number of students staying in the classrooms during the lunch break, and to persuade them to have lunch in the canteen. Only few students were reported to have agreed. As a result, the canteen had to throw away much of its unsold food.

The report cited the canteen manager as saying the prices of food and labour costs had soared in recent months and that the canteen had lost 30,000 to 40,000 yuan ($4,503-6,004 ) every month since August.

Earlier, on Nov 22, students at the No. 2 High School in Liupanshu city in China’s poorest province of Guizhou staged a violent protest after the school cafeteria raised prices by 0.2 to 0.3 yuan.

The Global Times online reported Nov 26 that following the incident in Guizhou, colleges and universities in Beijing were barred from raising the prices of dishes, while poor students were entitled to subsidies from both the municipal government and their schools.

In Shanxi, the provincial education authorities were reported to have asked local cafeterias to provide 1-yuan meal to students from poor families.

Food prices had rocketed more than 70 percent so far, the report said, citing a report by the popular Caijing newspaper.

Meanwhile, The Australian online Dec 2 cited economists as predicting that overall inflation in China would climb to 6 per cent in 2011 while the government had raised its target from 3 per cent for 2010 – a number it was set to miss – to 4 per cent. It said rapidly rising prices in China were being passed on to its export customers, with the price of many Chinese consumer goods rising by as much as 10 per cent or more. Figures were reported to show that input prices for factories were continuing to rise.

The report cited a number of major retailers, including Gerry Harvey, as saying the days of falling costs for Chinese goods were over, as the country moves from exporting deflation to exporting inflation.

Source : Tibetan Review