However horrible tomorrows UK inflation figures turn out to be, spare a though for Chinese consumers having to cope with huge price rises in basic foodstuffs.

Via ZeroHedge, the following is something of an eyeopener and may be a starting point for unrest on a massive scale :

This is simply stunning. A quick parsing of the data released every ten days by the National Bureau Of Statistics of China indicates that the average price of food in 50 cities in the January 21-31 period has increased by 4.6% compared to the prior 10 day period (and 416% annualized)! Granted, this is a simple average calculation of the 29 food items tracked without any weighing, although a quick glance at the components confirms that tonight’s Chinese CPI will likely be a doozy. Some of the key changes: cucumbers up 28.2% in ten days, kidney beans up 21.9%, rapes [no pun] up 14.5%, tomatoes up 12.9%, hair tails up 4.7%, bananas up 3.6%, chickens up 3.1%. And this, again, is in the past 10 days!

Do remember that those are over just the last 10 days and not the usual annual number we are used to seeing in the press.

The ZH link above has a full listing of the price changes in case you are interested in the gory details.

To make matters worse, the Chinese spend around a third of their income on food which doesn’t leave much wiggle room in a family budget in the face of massive price inflation.

Interestingly (and with very convenient timing), the Chinese seem to be about to engage in a little statistical manipulation to “improve” the overall inflation rate :

The National Bureau of Statistics regularly adjusts the composition of the CPI basket, conducting small tweaks every year and a major adjustment every five years. It is due for the five-year shift.

The statistics agency is expected to reduce the weighting of food in CPI and, with rising food prices having led the pick-up in Chinese inflation in recent months, such a change would likely lead to a lower inflation reading.

Figure fudging aside, the most likely cause of the increases above are due to to the freezing weather in Mexico over the last few weeks which has destroyed large amounts of fresh produce and will only serve to drive up prices everywhere as traders go looking for produce to fulfil their contractual obligations.

Watts up with that has more on Mexico :

Mexico’s biggest freeze since 1957 means US produce price will skyrocket

Freezing temperatures across a wide swath of Mexico the night of Feb. 3-4 have made a big impact in available fresh produce. Expect the effects to be felt in your supermarket any day now.

The freeze reached fields as far south as southern Sinaloa. Crops in the border state of Sonora could be devastated.

“The last time there was a freeze of this severity was 1957,” said Jerry Wagner, director of sales and marketing for Nogales, Ariz.-based Farmer’s Best. “It’s still too early to tell, but there’s a lot of damage.”

All of the growing regions Farmer’s Best ships from suffered freezing temperatures, Wagner said. The company’s full line of vegetables, including tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and squash, was likely affected.

One industry veteran told Jesse Driskill, operations manager of the Nogales office of Meyer LLC, that Mexico had not had a freeze like this in 60 years.

Given Britains prediliction for importing out of season food it won’t be too long before it starts hurting here as well.