Outsourcing

I met a Chinese analyst the other day who was telling me about the strong growth in rural consumption in China. He said he'd gone back to his home village in Yunnan province a couple of months ago and had gone for a jog in the surrounding hills. On his descent he saw one of his old primary schoolfriends jogging up the same path. This boy, he knew, had become a farmer.

"Hey!" he cried, "What are you doing jogging in the hills during the day. Shouldn't you be out on your farm?"

"You clearly haven't been back here for ages!" retorted his schoolfriend. "No one in this village farms any more: we all do business and have outsourced the farming to labourers from Sichuan province!"