Citation:
Date Presented:
February 5Abstract:
Since early discussions of food safety in China started in the late 1980s, food safety has become an increasingly important issue throughout China. The contemporary Chinese government established its first official bureaucratic agency focusing on food safety and nutrition then and created dozens of agencies to oversee related fields in the thirty years since. It was not until the last decade, though, that the government started implementing strong food safety reform. Many western critics have falsely predicted that the Chinese government would attempt to cover up any public distrust that food scandals inspire, but this preliminary research demonstrates that the Chinese government actually encourages many of this seemingly muckraking media. In reaction to food safety scandals, the Chinese government has reacted aggressively, sometimes even executing scandal orchestrators (Xinhua 2007). This thesis seeks to engage in this puzzle: why would an authoritarian regime that could repress dissent instead respond by taking measures to ensure food safety? Through ethnographic and library research in Shanghai, China, and supplementary comparative analysis of food safety in other parts of the world, I seek to answer the following questions: What are consumer attitudes toward food safety in China and what determines them? How has Chinese food regulation changed over time, and what caused these changes? What determines if or when the government reacts to food safety scandals?
My thesis explores these questions by arguing that specific global influences, scandals, and activist approaches have caused the Chinese government to pursue more aggressive food safety legal reform.