Chinese trigger Australian baby milk run

[skylee]

This has been happening in Hong Kong for a long time. Now it is happening in Australia. Perhaps it is also happening in other countries?

Reports -> Chinese trigger Australian baby milk run

Chinese students buy up baby formula in Australia, sell them on black market

Australian supermarkets and pharmacies were running out of popular baby formula on Thursday after unprecedented sales reportedly due to Chinese customers trying to secure supplies.

Media reports said Chinese residents or tourists in Australia were buying formula in bulk and shipping it back to their native country for family or sometimes sale online.

"Chinese visitors buy as many cans as they can fit into their luggage to take back to China," one manager of a pharmacy near a major international hotel in central Sydney told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Views?

[Cat Jones]

I read an article about Chinese tourists doing powdered milk runs to several countries and selling it on TMall. The mark up that Chinese people will pay for imported formula is significant given they are so terrified of the Chinese produced brands. Apparently it's very difficult for overseas suppliers of baby formula to get their products on to the shelves of Chinese supermarkets, and when they do the mark up on the products is so high that the average consumer can't afford it...so there's going to be an ongoing demand for other sources of imported formula .

[skylee]

The problem is that they buy so much that the locals find it hard to get milk powder themselves. And that also brings up the prices.

[count_zero]

The problem is the mothers don't use what God gave them.

[skylee]

Re #4, there are a lot of reasons (medical and logistcial) why baby formula is preferred/ needed.

[li3wei1]

If you don't trust a Chinese company to sell you good milk powder, why should you trust someone selling you what they claim is Australian milk powder over the internet? If the markup is high enough, it must be possible to repackage the Chinese stuff, or something even nastier.

[skylee]

Yeah, so silly. But still Chinese people are buying baby formula outside of China and shipping/bringing it back.

[Cat Jones]

It must be terryfing as a mother to have to try to find a source of baby milk that you can trust given the tragedies in the past.

[anonymoose]

Sounds like a business opportunity.

[roddy]

But if you try and do it on any scale, you run into the import tariffs or restrictions or whatever it is that results in the lack of supply or high cost (as you can tell I'm not massively informed on this issue). A bag full on a plane, a parcel sent to your home address and you can make a little bit of money. Try and run it as an actual business and you'll find out why someone else isn't already doing it.

@li3wei1 - because sadly, that's actually how broken things are. A government certification mark on the side is seen as less trustworthy than a seller's Taobao reputation. I also suspect you'll find information online from people concerned about just this issue - what should the seals look like, how to check for fakes, etc, just like you do with anything else of value.

[count_zero]

>> Re #4, there are a lot of reasons (medical and logistcial) why baby formula is preferred/ needed.

Are you joking?

The reason Chinese mothers use formula instead of breast milk is because of ignorance, superstition, corrupt doctors, unscrupulous companies and a lack of advertising standards.

Baby milk formula stunts IQ, reduces immunity to disease and kills thousands and thousands of infants across Asia every year.

[skylee]

Ah that probably explains my IQ.

[Kobo-Daishi]

I've seen articles on Chinese buying or leasing farmland in Australia, Africa, Laos, and elsewhere.

Articles on Chinese trying to buy dairy farms in New Zealand. Surely they'd be to higher standards if in New Zealand unless the officials there would take bribes from the Chinese. Though I do frequently read articles where westerners of huge conglomerates are under investigation for taking bribes in China back in the states.

I also saw a video at the BBC where Jim Rogers, the famous commodity investor said that farming is the growth industry of the future. He said that all the people who are currently in farming are old people and nobody young wants to get into agriculture. And with China and India's rise, the growing middle class is hungry for more meat and just more.

I just worry about my own food. They say that all our apples are from China, ditto with garlic, vitamin C as well, and plenty more.

I just opened a can of button mushrooms and it was from China. Before they were all from Taiwan.

Though I also read an article where China is now the biggest buyer of our California almonds. ;-0

And they are buying a lot of American corn and soybean, but, I think they just feed them to their hogs.

They should buy more American produce and then the trade imbalance would shrink. ;-0

Buy California milk. We've got this famous ad slogan "Got milk?" where celebrities have a white milk moustache on their upper lip. Do an Internet search. ;-)

Kobo.

[realmayo]

Erm, count zero is forgetting to mention that until relatively recently in the West, infant formula was seen as more modern and healthy than breastfeeding.

Plus the reasons he lists for people in China could equally apply to Westerners feeding slightly older babies babyfood rather than normal food.

Two more reasons to add to count zero's list:

i) women working a long way away from their babies

ii) concerns over food quality/safety (therefore keep using infant formula up to age 3 or so, to make sure child is getting enough nutrients etc).

[count_zero]

I didn't forget to mention that because it's not the slightest bit relevant even if it's true. And use of babyfood is nothing like use of milk formula - that's chalk and cheese. Look, this is clearly something you know absolutely nothing about.

China has notoriously corrupt and profiteering doctors. China has the world's highest c-section rate because doctors make more money by performing the surgery unecessarily. Then they illegally sell the personal information of the new mothers to milk powder companies who target them with false information. Chinese have a blind belief in science so the milk powder companies tell them their products are more "scientific" and healthier than breast milk. All lies. PR reps spread false information in the media about Chinese women's breasts not being big enough to produce enough milk or breast milk passing on diseases.

All this information has been readily available (in English) for years. This is one fairly recent article on the topic: http://www.danwei.co...ebels-in-china/ There will be dozens more out there, easily found.

[Lu]

The office I work in has at the moment several Chinese women with new babies. Some of them use breast pumps, some of them use baby formula. I suspect that not all Chinese offices offer the time and space needed for mothers to pump breast milk, so then a mother would have to either stop working or stop using breast milk. Not much of a choice there. The Danwei article linked to says that 'women undergo surgery, use the c-section as an excuse to not breastfeed and then hand the baby over to grandparents so they can continue living their lives.' Judgemental much? Most women won't have the knowledge to challenge a doctor when a doctor says a C-section is necessary, and also most women in China simply need to work because otherwise the family won't have enough income, which is also why they 'hand the baby over to grandparents'. Even if every woman in China would love to breastfeed, there still would be plenty of obstacles.

And furthermore there will always be mothers who need formula, because they don't produce enough milk, or because the baby has trouble breastfeeding, or because using a breast pump doesn't work for them as they get back to work, or for whatever reason.

As to the Australian milk run, it's not good if local parents can't get enough formula for their babies anymore, but wouldn't that be the kind of situation where supply would quickly increase to meet the increased demand? Even if it's hard to impossible to get into the Chinese formula market directly, I'd see good possibilities for a milk formula shop at the airport, for example. Apparently that's how it is in Macau. Surely there is no real shortage of milk yet.

[YuehanHao]

Ah that probably explains my IQ.

Nice - yet it seems one may still be grateful for having survived...

The reason Chinese mothers use formula instead of breast milk is because of ignorance, superstition, corrupt doctors, unscrupulous companies and a lack of advertising standards.

Perhaps a similar explanation applies to women in western societies, for the fraction of western babies who have never tasted formula must be quite small. Having recently observed my wife and sister struggle somewhat with nursing along with myriad other duties in their lives and falling back at some points and to some degree on formula as a supplement -- while I can still halfway laugh off stuff like this, I would hardly blame them (or particularly any Chinese mothers reading this thread) for reacting less charitably.

[msittig]

New Zealand already had and dealt with this problem:

Working formula: Chinese agents relieved as NZ lifts export ban｜Economy｜News｜WantChinaTimes.com - http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20121124000013&cid=1102

On Sept. 28, the New Zealand government introduced a new policy, imposing strict restrictions on milk powder exports, which led to its domestic milk powder prices soaring and the postponement of product delivery.

[xiaocai]

I don't think Taobao is black market.

[realmayo]

Count zero: sadly it's you who are uninformed, you imply it's a "Chinese" phenomenon, but it's extremely widespread. In the West, this all started maybe 70 year ago, and it's only in the last 30 or so years that people have been pushing back in favour of breast milk. Even so, loads of Western women use milk powder almost immediately. I don't know the stats but maybe something like 30% 50%?

Consider this from The Guardian:

In the 1950s and 1960s bottle feeding took off in the UK. Social changes as well as marketing were responsible, as increasing numbers of women began to work outside the home and it became more difficult for them to breastfeed. The modern and the artificial became desirable. By 1975 half of all babies were bottle-fed from birth.

Strikes me as a normal, if probably undesirable, symptom of modernisation. No surprise it's happened in China too.

And use of babyfood is nothing like use of milk formula - that's chalk and cheese. Look, this is clearly something you know absolutely nothing about.

Sorry I wasn't clear here. I was drawing a parallel: in the West babyfood is marketed as something that is desirable and important for a baby -- better than normal, adult food. The same way that milk powder is marketed as something that is desirable and important for a baby. But: there's no scientific reason for a baby to eat special babyfood. Again, I was trying to put your rather flouncy and high-strung remarks into a broader context.

I'd still like to see you explain how to breastfeed a one-year old baby when you're working on a building side in Jiangsu and your baby is living with your parents in Hunan. Thoughts?