Society

China's consumer price index (CPI), a major gauge of inflation, rose to a 28-month high of 5.1 percent in November, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Saturday.

The growth rate picked up from 4.4 percent in October, according to the NBS. The inflation was driven by a 11.7 percent of surge in food prices, which accounts for one third of the basket of goods used to calculate China's CPI.

The year-on-year increase in food prices grew from rises of 10.1 percent in October, 8 percent in September and 7.5 percent in August.

NBS spokesman Sheng Laiyun said the rise in food prices contributed 74 percent to November's CPI.

"Prices will stay stable in the following period of time as long as ministries and regional authorities seriously implement the central government's measures on checking prices," he said.

China is tightening oversight of its cosmetic surgery industry after one of the country’s biggest pop stars died while undergoing a facelift.

The Ministry of Health in a media briefing Friday said it will standardize surgical practices to promote safer development of the industry, according to a report from state-owned Xinhua news.

Wang Bei, a former winner of China’s reality TV show “Super Girl,” was undergoing facial reconstruction in Hebei province’s capital city Wuhan when her windpipe filled with blood, causing her to suffocate to death.

Demand for cosmetic surgery in China is booming in step with the growing pressure to look perfect. The country performed the world’s second highest number of procedures in 2009, behind the United States, according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.

John Appruzzese, Chairman of the Investment Policy Committee at Evercore Wealth Management, has some very scary numbers about China’s very own QE2 that suggest a possible inflationary bubble that needs to be popped.

Total bank loans in China are $7 trillion– greater than the US economy, which is triple the size of China. In other words China’s inflation might well be “significantly higher” than the 4.4% claimed. More like the 10% inflation in Chinese food prices or more.

Appruzzese reckons that a significant risk from “continued high inflation in China will cause the country’s relative labor and production costs to increase, effectively generating the same result as an appreciating currency without the advantage of additional puchasing power for the imported natural resources.”

I say there’s just as much risky fallout from China’s “now slamming on the monetary brakes.” This is due to the ramifications of China’s slowing on the US, Europe and rest of Asia. Today, if China gets the flu it spreads to western stock markets. It used to be the other way around. It used to be that when New York got a cold, the rest of the world got pneumonia.

“You know, my friends and relatives in the states still believe that the U.S. is the greatest place in the world,” explained an American in Melbourne, Australia. “They think the rest of the world is full of poor people who can’t wait to emigrate to the U.S. They need to get out more.”

So we get out. We open our eyes. We look around, and what do we see? We see a whole world full of people who are hustling and bustling, schlepping and trying to gain an advantage, each looking for a way to get richer, faster.

The motivations all over the world are about the same. People generally want wealth, power and status and they want to get it in the easiest possible way but it can mean different things to different people. They go about it differently too. In the mature economies, they look for subsidies and angles. Tax breaks. Bailouts. Boondoggles. Sinecures.

“We have plenty of corruption here in India, too,” a colleague noted. “But most people know they can’t get much from the government. They have no choice. They have to start a business or get a job.”