The bustling Guangdong New Co-op grocery store tucked away in a corner of an otherwise empty supermarket in Huangbian, a suburb of Guangzhou, looks much like any other grocery store in the country, but it is a front-line in the Chinese government’s battle against food inflation.

The campaign has won plenty of converts. Mrs Xu, a 40-something shopper, put cabbages into her trolley and declared she was pleased with the local government’s new initiative to roll out inexpensive grocery stores in the province, which is just across the border from Hong Kong and has a population of 95m. “It’s just Rmb0.58 per jin [500g]. It is even cheaper than the wet market, which sells cabbage at Rmb1 per jin,” she said.

Guangdong has opened 40 similar low-priced grocery stores this year, keeping prices low through a combination of state subsidies and direct buying from farmers. The local government plans to spend Rmb450m ($70m) building 300 low-price grocery stores over the next three years.