As is the case across China, complaints about rising pork prices are constant and loud in Xinfadi, the biggest meat market in Beijing.

“Comrades, pork prices really scare me!” a customer in his 60s yells to the crowd, with another responding: “A few days ago when I came here, the price of ribs was 16 yuan for half a kilo. Today it’s 25 yuan.”

The irony, and possibly the cause for the concern, is that Xinfadi mainly deals with wholesale buyers but also sells directly to consumers, offering the lowest pork prices in the capital city.

Prices for food products, especially pork, are one of the major indicators used by Chinese citizens to informally gauge their financial well-being, and at the moment, that well-being is being eroded rapidly.

Across China, pork prices have doubled since July, reaching record highs of 30 yuan (US$4.20) to 33 yuan per kilogram, surpassing analyst expectations. The last time pork prices reached similar levels, in June 2016, they peaked at 31.56 yuan per kilogram, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.

But on this occasion, prices are expected to continue to rise until the end of the year and into the Lunar New Year holiday season at the end of January, when pork is traditionally at the centre of family feasts. And while the government is implementing policies to offset the price increases, it will take years to build the supply of pigs back up to their previous levels after the outbreak of African swine fever in August led to the culling of hundreds of thousands of pigs and breeding stock to stop the spread of the virus, analysts said.

Last week, a video of a group of shoppers fighting over a large piece of fresh pork during the opening of American warehouse retailer Costco’s first store in Shanghai went viral across Chinese social media.

In July, China’s live pig stock stood 32.3 per cent below a year earlier, according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, after the African swine fever epidemic forced the country to slaughter at least 1 million pigs.

Pork is by far the most popular meat consumed in China, and data from Beijing-based financial news outlet Caixin shows that each person in China consumes about 55kg of it every year.

The average Chinese consumer eats about 55kg of pork a year. Photo: Reuters More

The sharp drop in supply caused pork prices to soar and is now a growing source of public discontent, with Beijing responding by rolling out a series of emergency remedies.

One such remedy would reverse a 2016 policy that restricted pig breeding in eight southern provinces to large farms and closed more than 150,000 smaller farms to increase efficiency and protect the environment.

At a cabinet meeting in August, Premier Li Keqiang ordered local governments to stop demolishing small pig farms while also lifting restrictions on small-scale pig farming in the countryside.

Li also told local governments to provide subsidies to large pig farms to “effectively increase the population of live hogs”, while also setting local pig quotas.

But around three years of moves to eliminate smaller farms has also led to discontent, with one article about the policy change published on WeChat after Li’s speech generating over 100,000 largely negative views in 24 hours.

“We won’t breed [pigs] any more, even if there is compensation and support,” one online user wrote in a typical response to the article. “I had to bury [dead pigs] by myself due to African swine fever this year, without a penny of subsidies. I’m nearly bankrupt, how can I raise pigs again?

“I invested millions of yuan to build a pig farm in 2000, but [they] demolished it in 2018, [and only] gave me 100,000 yuan as compensation. Now I am 60 years old but have to carry cement at a construction site [to make money], with a lot of debts to be paid off.”

In the near-term, lower supply – exacerbated by the trade war with the United States – will mean higher prices.

“Given the situation, we can expect the price to continue to go up and at the same time, consumption to go down,” said Chenjun Pan, senior analyst for animal protein at Rabobank. “This basic mechanism will help to slow down the rise in pork prices.”