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When I enrolled at university, a motivational book called Who Moved My Cheese by US writer Spencer Johnson,  about the different ways two mice and two 'littlepeople'  reacted to changes in their work and lives, was among the best-sellers  on the mainland. 
Nowadays, most of the mainland's 1.3 billion people  face a similar question: who moved the money from my pocket? 
The National Bureau of Statistics  announced this month that the  consumer price index, a key measure of inflation, rose 4.4 per cent last month, the biggest increase in more than two years. 
Because Beijing doesn't include rent and mortgage payments in its calculations - and considering rampant speculation in the real estate market - the real inflation rate is bound to be even higher. 
Average housing prices in 70  cities rose 8.6 per cent year on year last month. Food prices rose 10.1 per cent,  and that's a real problem on the mainland, where food accounts for roughly 40 per cent of the average person's total consumption.
Incomes haven't kept pace and inflation is secretly stealing money from everyone's pocket.  
According to Caijing magazine, per capita gross domestic product was 14 times bigger in 2008 than it was in 1990. But city salaries rose just short of tenfold in the same time.  Farmers fared even worse, with their incomes just over six times bigger. 
How best to react when the purchasing power of your money is  continually eroded by  state policies? How do you respond to such a change affecting  your family? 
In Shenzhen, many housewives who used to buy tax-free luxury cosmetics and clothes in Hong Kong have now shifted their targets to many mainland-made commodities - from apples to shampoos, toilet paper and dog food - that cost some 30 per cent less than  back home. After paying HK$41 for a return trip between Lo Wo and Sheung Shui,  they  still save 300 yuan to 400 yuan (HK$350 to HK$466) on groceries. 
Rather than blaming the tens of trillions of yuan of excess liquidity sloshing around the mainland, National Bureau of Statistics spokesman Sheng Laiyun  attributed  inflation to  higher prices for raw materials, including crude oil, and natural disasters. 
Some government mouthpieces in Shenzhen  even hail the city's skyrocketing  prices as evidence of the mainland's astonishing economic growth. They say Hong Kong and Shenzhen have reversed their roles, with  more Shenzhen  residents shopping in the special administrative region and many Hongkongers finding they can no longer afford to spend their weekends in Shenzhen. 
It's true that a coffee costs more in a Shenzhen Starbucks than in Hong Kong, when taking the exchange rate into consideration. But the average monthly income in Shenzhen was just 3,894 yuan last year, a figure that reveals the illusory nature of  the city's  growth claims. 
The thief taking people's money is actually the loose monetary policy over the past decade introduced by the central government. 
The mainland's money supply exceeded 60 trillion yuan last year, with 9.59 trillion yuan worth of new credit - up 95 per cent on 2008. 
Much of the excess liquidity found its way into  real estate. 
Take Shenzhen as an example. The  average property price jumped from 11,000 yuan per square metre in late 2008 to about 28,000 yuan this year, according to the city's planning and land resource committee.  In 2006,  flats were selling for just 7,000 yuan per sq metre. But desperate Shenzhen investors with no  better way to offset devaluation have to buy more flats, resulting in a vicious circle of rising prices. The resulting real estate bubble and the excessive liquidity that caused it are  affecting grocery prices and daily lives. 
Professor Zhou Qiren, dean of Peking University's National School of Development, says excess liquidity can be regarded as a secret government tax because it erodes  purchasing power. 'When taxation and government bonds can't meet the authorities' demand on public expenditure, they'll decide to print more money ... the government can have an instant money supply from printing houses, but the public will finally suffer the result of oversupplied  currency - inflation,' Zhou wrote on his blog. 
So how do you deal with a thief like this?



It's getting harder to buy groceries at a steal