No need for alarm; but some Chinese ring bells anyway

"WITH grain in our hands there is no need to panic," according to China' s prime minister, Wen Jiabao. But officials worry about how to keep China near self-sufficiency in grain and sheltered from rising world prices. Mr Wen's remarks during a farm tour in Hebei in the north were meant to calm public anxieties about food-price inflation elsewhere in the world. Chinese food prices have been rising fast too in recent months, but the main impact has been on meat. Rice- and wheat-price increases have been modest, except for high-quality imports, a small share of domestic consumption. China produces more than 90% of the ...