1 00:00:05,034 --> 00:00:10,810 Our guest today is Mr. John Yasuda 2 00:00:10,810 --> 00:00:14,302 who is currently a postdoctoral fellow 3 00:00:14,478 --> 00:00:21,099 at the center for the study of contemporary China at UPenn 4 00:00:21,099 --> 00:00:24,647 on a two-year fellowship during the second year of your fellowship 5 00:00:24,647 --> 00:00:28,812 so he's there working on the book manuscript 6 00:00:28,812 --> 00:00:30,000 the title of which is 7 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:32,492 matches the title of a talk today I believe 8 00:00:32,492 --> 00:00:37,629 Why Is My Milk Blue: China's Food Safety and Scale Politics 9 00:00:38,193 --> 00:00:44,040 We'll be starting a 10-year  track professorship of the completion of that 10 00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:49,134 at Colorado College in Colorado Springs at the end of this academic year 11 00:00:49,134 --> 00:00:52,734 Thank you professor for that very kind introduction 12 00:00:52,734 --> 00:00:54,734 It's really a delight to be here at Cornell 13 00:00:54,734 --> 00:00:59,346 many thanks to the Cornell Contemporary China Initiative for this invitation 14 00:00:59,346 --> 00:01:01,918 now the title of my talk today 15 00:01:01,918 --> 00:01:07,114 Why Is My Milk Blue could actually be replaced by a number of other questions that 16 00:01:07,114 --> 00:01:11,685 China's bewildered consumers have been asking about their food over the last 10 years 17 00:01:11,685 --> 00:01:14,427 why is my soy sauce made out of human hair? 18 00:01:14,427 --> 00:01:17,112 why are my peas painted green? 19 00:01:17,112 --> 00:01:20,635 why is there plastic cellophane in my instant noodles? 20 00:01:20,635 --> 00:01:25,863 and why is most of my cooking oil produced in backyard workshops like this 21 00:01:25,863 --> 00:01:31,399 in 2010 they found out that a large number of cooking oil receptacles 22 00:01:31,399 --> 00:01:33,697 had what they called gutter oil which was basically   23 00:01:33,697 --> 00:01:38,255 recycled cooking oil dredged up from city sewers and then 24 00:01:38,255 --> 00:01:41,400 distributed to local restaurants and then   25 00:01:41,400 --> 00:01:43,779 even found in certain grocery stores 26 00:01:43,779 --> 00:01:49,020 now of course these significant food safety scandals really   27 00:01:49,020 --> 00:01:55,295 point to a fundamental failure in food safety  governance within this country and of course 28 00:01:55,295 --> 00:02:00,000 the real sort of sad part to all of this, the tragic part to all of this 29 00:02:00,000 --> 00:02:01,684 is that China's consumers are suffering 30 00:02:01,684 --> 00:02:08,371 Nothing tells us, shows us this  more than the 2008 melamine crisis 31 00:02:08,371 --> 00:02:12,830 in which infant formula was adulterated with a substance 32 00:02:12,830 --> 00:02:16,620 called melamine which caused children   33 00:02:16,620 --> 00:02:20,000 to sort of develop kidney stones, premature  kidney stones 34 00:02:20,000 --> 00:02:21,960 300, 000 of them were poisoned  35 00:02:21,960 --> 00:02:28,513 now what I'd like to suggest to you today during this talk is that more than simply 36 00:02:28,513 --> 00:02:34,613 a function of its economic development, its level of corruption, or its state capacity 37 00:02:34,613 --> 00:02:37,919 China's food safety problems are linked to 38 00:02:37,919 --> 00:02:45,191 its inability to manage the scale of the systems of food production and that 39 00:02:45,191 --> 00:02:51,406 the disruptive regulatory politics that ensue as a result of this failure to manage its scale 40 00:02:51,406 --> 00:02:57,549 has led to significant food safety failure 41 00:02:57,549 --> 00:02:58,920 So first why food safety?   42 00:02:58,920 --> 00:03:01,494 food safety has usually been relegated to 43 00:03:01,494 --> 00:03:04,558 the area of technical discussions among bureaucrats 44 00:03:04,558 --> 00:03:08,168 about setting appropriate maximum residue limits 45 00:03:08,168 --> 00:03:12,240 or how to set standards or which global certification scheme 46 00:03:12,240 --> 00:03:15,212 in which to base its national standards 47 00:03:15,212 --> 00:03:18,623 but food safety also has significant political stakes   48 00:03:18,922 --> 00:03:23,605 now for those of you who recall problems that are developed in the EU 49 00:03:23,605 --> 00:03:25,984 in the 1990s because of mad cow disease 50 00:03:25,984 --> 00:03:30,534 the failure of the EU government to  actually deal with food safety problems 51 00:03:30,534 --> 00:03:33,370 led to the toppling of governments across the continent 52 00:03:34,055 --> 00:03:36,902 food safety issues have spawned social movements   53 00:03:37,200 --> 00:03:41,118 within India and here in the United States  has spawned several social movements 54 00:03:41,118 --> 00:03:44,458 related to organic food, local food 55 00:03:44,458 --> 00:03:47,280 and the community-supported agricultural movement as well 56 00:03:47,280 --> 00:03:52,384 in China food safety is one of those  cross-cutting issues 57 00:03:52,384 --> 00:03:54,924 that affect a large swath of its population 58 00:03:54,924 --> 00:03:57,800 regardless of socioeconomic class 59 00:03:57,800 --> 00:04:02,007 which creates a potential legitimacy crisis for the regime 60 00:04:02,007 --> 00:04:05,821 which is why food safety  features prominently in China's legislation 61 00:04:05,821 --> 00:04:08,792 This year alone in China's document number one 62 00:04:08,792 --> 00:04:13,010 which lays out the legislative priorities for the year   63 00:04:13,010 --> 00:04:18,840 food safety is the key item: food safety right along with food security, key items it says  64 00:04:19,380 --> 00:04:22,762 the other issue is that food safety is a real fascinating way 65 00:04:22,762 --> 00:04:25,020 to look at the governance system   66 00:04:25,020 --> 00:04:28,778 of any country but especially China 67 00:04:28,778 --> 00:04:31,560 I think few people realize how difficult it is   68 00:04:31,560 --> 00:04:37,684 to actually ensure that the food that you eat on your table is indeed safe 69 00:04:37,684 --> 00:04:41,444 Moving a part of what we in the business like to say 70 00:04:41,444 --> 00:04:46,200 moving it from farm to fork is a very very complex process   71 00:04:46,200 --> 00:04:50,180 involving thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of producers 72 00:04:50,180 --> 00:04:52,180 and distributors and wholesalers 73 00:04:52,277 --> 00:04:56,654 at which any point, a single adulterant, microbe  74 00:04:56,654 --> 00:04:59,718 could lead to massive food contamination 75 00:04:59,718 --> 00:05:03,130 and all of this requires extraordinary coordination 76 00:05:03,130 --> 00:05:07,800 on the part of the state in order to get things right   77 00:05:07,800 --> 00:05:12,396 now what all this is to say is that 78 00:05:12,396 --> 00:05:17,178 if a country is able to manage such a complex governance issue like food safety    79 00:05:17,436 --> 00:05:22,811 they're likely going to be able to manage other very challenging governance issues as well 80 00:05:22,811 --> 00:05:26,700 it serves as a  barometer of good governance if you will   81 00:05:27,300 --> 00:05:33,295 and finally for those of us here in the United States and not to scare anybody 82 00:05:33,295 --> 00:05:36,300 China's food safety problems are quickly becoming our own  83 00:05:36,300 --> 00:05:38,880 so if academically it doesn't interest you   84 00:05:38,880 --> 00:05:43,192 this project should interest you just because  of your exposure to risk alone 85 00:05:43,192 --> 00:05:46,640 Chinese food imports into this country 86 00:05:46,640 --> 00:05:50,954 don't constitute a large supply of our actual general food supply 87 00:05:50,954 --> 00:05:53,922 It only constitutes about two and half percent 88 00:05:53,922 --> 00:05:55,922 The key issue is that 89 00:05:56,583 --> 00:06:00,944 China has secured a very large presence in key product groups 90 00:06:00,944 --> 00:06:06,452 Garlic, more to the tune of 50% is from China 91 00:06:06,452 --> 00:06:10,000 Apple juice, roughly about 60% from China 92 00:06:10,000 --> 00:06:12,986 Frozen fillets, about 30% from China 93 00:06:12,986 --> 00:06:18,417 and for those of you who like tilapia, 80% of that is from China 94 00:06:18,417 --> 00:06:22,115 So China's food safety  problems are quickly becoming our own 95 00:06:22,115 --> 00:06:25,475 so food safety matters, food safety matters empirically, 96 00:06:25,475 --> 00:06:29,007 theoretically, and also simply practically   97 00:06:30,000 --> 00:06:32,814 Now in China itself the problem of food safety 98 00:06:32,814 --> 00:06:35,515 is now one of the top three governance concerns 99 00:06:35,515 --> 00:06:40,534 along with inequality and corruption right up there  100 00:06:40,534 --> 00:06:42,534 and we see that year on year 101 00:06:42,794 --> 00:06:45,092 there is an increase in the number of consumer complaints 102 00:06:45,092 --> 00:06:51,301 the China Consumer Association from 2010 to 2012, we see a 22% increase 103 00:06:51,584 --> 00:06:53,903 and then the EU food safety system 104 00:06:53,903 --> 00:06:58,039 which actually tracks Chinese food products within the EU Market 105 00:06:58,039 --> 00:07:04,740 also shows a year-on-year increase of violations of food safety   106 00:07:04,740 --> 00:07:08,277 Now this is not to say that the Chinese  government hasn't been doing anything 107 00:07:08,277 --> 00:07:11,770 that this has all been occurring in some sort of governance vacuum 108 00:07:11,770 --> 00:07:16,914 the Chinese government has been working very very hard to address this  problem 109 00:07:16,914 --> 00:07:21,680 this huge list of reforms just as a sort of sampling of the types of reforms  110 00:07:21,680 --> 00:07:24,300 that the Chinese government has been trying to pursue 111 00:07:24,300 --> 00:07:27,238 in order to address food safety 112 00:07:27,238 --> 00:07:32,915 five major bureaucratic restructurings in the last 10 years and many more minor reforms 113 00:07:32,915 --> 00:07:36,060 and the government has put money where its mouth is   114 00:07:36,060 --> 00:07:39,586 an investment of over 800 million US dollars 115 00:07:39,586 --> 00:07:44,545 to upgrade labs, technical capacity, and training of personnel  116 00:07:44,545 --> 00:07:47,338 and of course, we wouldn't be China  117 00:07:47,338 --> 00:07:52,256 without constant constant campaigns against malfeasant bureaucrats 118 00:07:52,256 --> 00:07:54,481 and non-compliant producers 119 00:07:54,481 --> 00:07:57,780 So given this flurry of activity   120 00:07:57,780 --> 00:08:00,460 the question of the day is 121 00:08:00,460 --> 00:08:04,113 why on earth is China's food safety system still failing 122 00:08:04,113 --> 00:08:11,030 so what I'd like to do first is present how food safety in China presents a bit of a puzzle 123 00:08:11,030 --> 00:08:13,752 for those of us who study regulatory governance 124 00:08:13,752 --> 00:08:16,518 and then I'll try to show 125 00:08:16,518 --> 00:08:20,450 how scale politics, my concept and my answer to 126 00:08:20,450 --> 00:08:25,973 why China's food safety problem is so severe can better explain that puzzle 127 00:08:25,973 --> 00:08:29,474 then I'll highlight the concept at work 128 00:08:29,474 --> 00:08:34,121 looking at two food safety approaches that the state has employed to address the crisis 129 00:08:34,121 --> 00:08:37,443 and finally, I'll conclude with some broader implications 130 00:08:37,443 --> 00:08:43,976 for the book, for political scientists and also for social scientists in general 131 00:08:43,976 --> 00:08:48,754 So first, most people think about food safety in China and they say 132 00:08:48,754 --> 00:08:53,280 well, you know China is still a developing country   133 00:08:53,280 --> 00:08:57,570 don't all countries actually go through  food safety problems 134 00:08:57,570 --> 00:08:59,570 at some point in their industrial development 135 00:08:59,666 --> 00:09:01,643 after all here in the United States 136 00:09:01,643 --> 00:09:06,232 one need only look to Upton Sinclaire's work in the jungle to remember that  137 00:09:06,232 --> 00:09:09,395 our meat processing industry had huge problems   138 00:09:09,395 --> 00:09:13,438 prior to the 1906 legislation which fixed it  139 00:09:13,438 --> 00:09:15,091 the idea of course is that 140 00:09:15,091 --> 00:09:20,000 as China eventually gets richer, its citizens will demand better and higher quality food 141 00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:23,229 and the market will begin to sort these problems out 142 00:09:23,229 --> 00:09:27,237 Now when we look at  a cross-national database 143 00:09:28,229 --> 00:09:29,745 we notice that yes 144 00:09:29,745 --> 00:09:34,099 GDP per capita does have a positive relationship with food safety outcomes 145 00:09:34,785 --> 00:09:41,242 but what we see is that China underperforms relative to its level of GDP per capita 146 00:09:41,242 --> 00:09:43,034 so something else is at work  147 00:09:43,034 --> 00:09:46,581 other people will point to corruption, and of course 148 00:09:46,581 --> 00:09:48,960 there is significant amounts of corruption   149 00:09:48,960 --> 00:09:51,440 anybody following the news recently will know that 150 00:09:51,440 --> 00:09:55,455  Mr. Xi Jinping's big number one issue 151 00:09:55,455 --> 00:09:59,003 is rooting out corruption throughout the party apparatus 152 00:09:59,003 --> 00:10:02,160 and of course, in food safety we see corruption all the time 153 00:10:02,160 --> 00:10:04,818 We see the buying and selling of certificates  154 00:10:04,818 --> 00:10:08,148 we see payouts to auditors 155 00:10:08,406 --> 00:10:11,377 and we see regulatory capture all over the map 156 00:10:12,022 --> 00:10:17,013 but again it's helpful  to put China in an international context   157 00:10:17,940 --> 00:10:21,480 looking at World Bank scores that  measure the level of corruption   158 00:10:21,480 --> 00:10:26,220 again we see that China underperforms  relative to its level of corruption   159 00:10:27,600 --> 00:10:30,408 Now we turn to issues of state capacity 160 00:10:30,408 --> 00:10:33,609 do we lack the labs, do we lack the personnel 161 00:10:33,609 --> 00:10:37,659 do we lack the labs and monitoring equipment  162 00:10:37,659 --> 00:10:40,320 necessary to deal with this food safety problem?   163 00:10:40,320 --> 00:10:43,935 certainly we do but again looking cross-nationally  164 00:10:43,935 --> 00:10:46,554 we see relative to its level of state capacity   165 00:10:46,554 --> 00:10:49,546 China is underperforming 166 00:10:49,546 --> 00:10:55,786 then others might also suppose that maybe it's a consequence of authoritarian politics 167 00:10:55,786 --> 00:11:00,000 and this is a very  reasonable hypothesis because after all 168 00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:06,092 what we know about good regulatory governance is that not  that it's premised on Democracy 169 00:11:06,092 --> 00:11:12,331 but its premise on attributes of democracy like bureaucratic  Independence and transparency 170 00:11:12,331 --> 00:11:18,120 so what we would  expect is that authoritarian regimes perhaps perform poorly in terms of regulatory outcomes   171 00:11:18,840 --> 00:11:25,860 so we look to the data again, looking at quality  scores and again conveniently and wonderfully   172 00:11:25,860 --> 00:11:30,000 for the purposes of my book project, China is an outlier 173 00:11:31,000 --> 00:11:35,277 Democratic governance doesn't seem to explain what is going on in China now 174 00:11:35,834 --> 00:11:41,513 Now given these issues I was roaming around the countryside for days, months trying to figure out 175 00:11:41,513 --> 00:11:43,545 what was actually at stake 176 00:11:43,545 --> 00:11:49,086 and finally one of my interlocutors, after several bottles of baijiu (Chinese spirits) mind you 177 00:11:49,086 --> 00:11:53,617 turns to me, exasperated, blows smoke in my face and he says 178 00:11:53,617 --> 00:12:00,351 you idiot (ni zhe ge ben dan)! you have no idea what's wrong with this country, do you 179 00:12:00,351 --> 00:12:03,497 I said well you know I'm trying to figure out, that's my whole point  180 00:12:03,497 --> 00:12:06,722 and he said, he was like, I'll tell you the reason why 181 00:12:06,722 --> 00:12:09,055 China's food safety system doesn't work 182 00:12:09,055 --> 00:12:14,699 at that moment I was like this is the moment where every PhD student says yes 183 00:12:14,699 --> 00:12:17,364 it's all going to come  together right now 184 00:12:17,364 --> 00:12:19,364 and he turns to me and he says   185 00:12:20,340 --> 00:12:25,444 look it's really easy, China's too big and we have too many people 186 00:12:25,444 --> 00:12:26,976 and I rolled my eyes and I said 187 00:12:26,976 --> 00:12:29,717 well thanks Mr. Zhang that helps me out a lot 188 00:12:29,717 --> 00:12:32,340 but in fact when you think about it 189 00:12:32,340 --> 00:12:39,180 China has over 240 million farmers over tens of millions of processors 190 00:12:39,180 --> 00:12:42,240 many of them in backyard workshops producing gutter oil   191 00:12:42,240 --> 00:12:47,581 and hundreds of thousands, if not millions of distributors right 192 00:12:47,581 --> 00:12:51,880 and it poses a very significant regulatory design problem 193 00:12:51,880 --> 00:12:54,866 for those trying to build a coherent system 194 00:12:54,866 --> 00:13:00,434 so scale might really be at the heart of China's regulatory challenge in food safety 195 00:13:01,204 --> 00:13:06,194 And of course, discussions of scale have emerged in different types of literature 196 00:13:06,194 --> 00:13:09,161 and economists have been very interested in studying   197 00:13:09,161 --> 00:13:13,364 the trade-offs of political control and large heterogeneous systems 198 00:13:13,364 --> 00:13:21,373 others, many political scientists are obsessed with how size, whether measured at surface area or by population 199 00:13:21,373 --> 00:13:27,780 has different effects on democratic outcomes and of course those in public administration show that   200 00:13:27,780 --> 00:13:33,272 large, unwieldy bureaucracies tend to distort and garble information flows 201 00:13:33,272 --> 00:13:35,196 that would really help efficient governance 202 00:13:36,285 --> 00:13:41,532 now the one thing that's missing in all these discussions and what I'm really interested in 203 00:13:41,532 --> 00:13:47,880 is how scale actually  shapes the way people view their political world 204 00:13:49,210 --> 00:13:54,900 like, what are the differences does a Chinese regulator view the world similarly   205 00:13:55,800 --> 00:14:00,957 that compared to a regulator that exists in Sweden, right? Given differences in scale   206 00:14:00,957 --> 00:14:04,239 how does it actually shape the way that they look at the world 207 00:14:06,416 --> 00:14:13,374 I turn to political geography outside of my beloved discipline of political science and ecological sciences 208 00:14:13,374 --> 00:14:19,334 to people who have been obsessed with scale, and they take a slightly different conceptualization of it 209 00:14:19,334 --> 00:14:25,456 which is not driven by a single number such as population  or surface area or degree of heterogeneity    210 00:14:25,456 --> 00:14:29,693 and instead when they say when you speak of the scale  of a governance system 211 00:14:29,693 --> 00:14:33,276 you're really speaking about a governance system's degree of Zoom 212 00:14:34,606 --> 00:14:40,954 and of course, within any system there are governing  systems operating at multiple scales 213 00:14:40,954 --> 00:14:43,639 they are operating at different degrees of Zoom 214 00:14:43,639 --> 00:14:48,857 you have a national degree of Zoom, a provincial degree of  Zoom so forth and so on 215 00:14:49,059 --> 00:14:56,123 now scale affects the way that individuals view their political world in a significant way 216 00:14:56,123 --> 00:15:01,501 not only spatially and jurisdictionally, but it affects their time frames 217 00:15:01,501 --> 00:15:04,227 it affects the types of knowledge that they're interested in 218 00:15:04,564 --> 00:15:07,653 it affects the type of networks that they're focused on 219 00:15:07,653 --> 00:15:12,288 are they looking at multinational corporations or are they looking at local market towns 220 00:15:12,288 --> 00:15:18,058 because an emphasis of either or or, really does shape the way how they craft solutions 221 00:15:18,058 --> 00:15:23,920 even managerially, are they involved with setting strategies that involve the nation  222 00:15:23,920 --> 00:15:26,570 Are they simply trying to deal with day-to-day tasks 223 00:15:26,570 --> 00:15:30,000 that are involved with managing food safety at the village scale 224 00:15:30,642 --> 00:15:35,121 Scale really drives the way individuals view their political world 225 00:15:35,121 --> 00:15:38,371 and this is how politics come into play 226 00:15:38,371 --> 00:15:40,685 Here is Papa Xi here 227 00:15:40,685 --> 00:15:42,928 overseeing the whole of China 228 00:15:43,734 --> 00:15:47,403 his interests in food safety are to reduce the number of mass contaminations 229 00:15:48,250 --> 00:15:52,080 He's also interested in bringing China's food safety standards   230 00:15:52,080 --> 00:16:00,900 into line with global standards developed by the ISO, by Codex Alimentarius through the WTO   231 00:16:02,520 --> 00:16:11,220 Now my friend here, who is a husbandry bureau official 232 00:16:11,220 --> 00:16:15,300 Husband bureau official, I wonder what that bureau would look like, a husbandry bureau official   233 00:16:15,300 --> 00:16:19,287 dealing with pigs and livestock in my County 234 00:16:19,287 --> 00:16:20,916 somewhere in Sichuan 235 00:16:20,916 --> 00:16:24,488 looks at his food safety problem completely different 236 00:16:24,488 --> 00:16:26,446 He's not interested in global standards 237 00:16:26,446 --> 00:16:29,631 He's interested in local standards that have been developed 238 00:16:29,631 --> 00:16:33,615 He's focused on the farmers and the local market networks 239 00:16:33,615 --> 00:16:37,370 that he's in charge of overseeing 240 00:16:37,370 --> 00:16:40,000 and he's also interested in local conditions 241 00:16:40,233 --> 00:16:41,917 This is his view of the world 242 00:16:41,917 --> 00:16:48,095 now, the key is how do you actually  get these two gentlemen on the same page 243 00:16:49,617 --> 00:16:52,740 because their scale logics are completely different 244 00:16:53,425 --> 00:16:59,795 so scale politics refers to the disruptive politics of integrating policy communities 245 00:16:59,795 --> 00:17:04,680 that are  operating at different scales right scale politics   246 00:17:04,680 --> 00:17:11,400 refers to the disruptive politics of integrating policy communities operating at different scales   247 00:17:11,400 --> 00:17:16,345 now what this involves then when you try to build a national system 248 00:17:16,345 --> 00:17:22,490 is you have to integrate these scales across a variety of dimensions  249 00:17:23,135 --> 00:17:28,225 and do this seamlessly and try to get over the bureaucratic politics that ensue 250 00:17:28,225 --> 00:17:31,092 this is a rather complicated way to think about it 251 00:17:31,092 --> 00:17:35,886 An easier way is to think about nesting larger systems with smaller systems 252 00:17:36,169 --> 00:17:42,204 China's food safety problem is a regulatory Russian Matryoshka doll problem  253 00:17:42,204 --> 00:17:48,977 of how to effectively nest smaller systems within larger systems 254 00:17:48,977 --> 00:17:53,793 so why food safety is so theoretically interesting is that 255 00:17:53,793 --> 00:17:56,002 it is large and it's very heterogeneous 256 00:17:56,002 --> 00:17:59,798 it's highly decentralized and it's a multi-scale system 257 00:17:59,798 --> 00:18:01,825 production occurs all the way at the village level 258 00:18:01,825 --> 00:18:07,193 but eventually it intersects with every single scale all the way to the global level 259 00:18:08,161 --> 00:18:11,225 now the reason why it's so useful to do this is 260 00:18:12,192 --> 00:18:18,033 food safety now sort of serves as an extreme case to really help highlight causal mechanisms 261 00:18:18,033 --> 00:18:20,703 if I looked at the same process in aviation safety 262 00:18:20,703 --> 00:18:25,380 where the Chinese have done marvelously but is small and homogeneous   263 00:18:25,380 --> 00:18:28,885 centralized and only really involves the national and provincial scales 264 00:18:28,885 --> 00:18:31,328 as far as regulatory policy is concerned 265 00:18:31,328 --> 00:18:35,432 you're not going to see the sort of the mechanisms at work 266 00:18:35,432 --> 00:18:39,292 which is why food safety is an ideal case to sort of study 267 00:18:40,260 --> 00:18:46,130 now back to China, how did we get to this problem that we see today 268 00:18:46,694 --> 00:18:50,617 now I went to one of my interlocutors  and many of them were grumpy 269 00:18:50,617 --> 00:18:53,262 and so I asked 270 00:18:53,262 --> 00:18:59,315 I asked him I said well you know so tell me about  food safety problems in the 1980s 271 00:18:59,315 --> 00:19:02,611 and he looks at me and he gives thisvery critical look and he says 272 00:19:02,611 --> 00:19:05,933 food safety problems in the 1980s 273 00:19:05,933 --> 00:19:13,157 we didn't care about food safety, we didn't have enough food which was very very unnerving to hear 274 00:19:13,157 --> 00:19:19,037 but of course the reality was that in the 1980s food  safety problems were very limited in scope 275 00:19:19,037 --> 00:19:21,569 they would only encompass a small locality 276 00:19:21,569 --> 00:19:24,834 it usually would involve local production networks 277 00:19:24,834 --> 00:19:29,752  and more often than not, it was constrained to issues of  basic sanitation 278 00:19:30,558 --> 00:19:36,332 but following a 30-year expansion of agricultural markets and production 279 00:19:36,332 --> 00:19:40,000 we see a fundamental scaling up of China's food safety risk profile 280 00:19:40,927 --> 00:19:46,486 by the 2000s scandals are widespread encompassing the entire nation 281 00:19:47,131 --> 00:19:50,000 supply chains are extraordinarily complex 282 00:19:50,000 --> 00:19:55,873 involving small farmers that are cultivating on less than one "mu"  283 00:19:55,873 --> 00:19:58,700 less than a hectare of land 284 00:19:58,700 --> 00:20:04,949 and involving multinational corporations integrated in these large, lengthy supply chains 285 00:20:04,949 --> 00:20:11,596 a good friend of mine who tried  to set up a...let's see because this is recorded 286 00:20:11,596 --> 00:20:17,117 I will say an international supermarket chain within  China, confessed to me 287 00:20:17,117 --> 00:20:18,060 and he said 288 00:20:18,871 --> 00:20:23,865 westerners have no idea how to actually implement supply chain management within China 289 00:20:23,865 --> 00:20:25,430 it is far too complex   290 00:20:26,398 --> 00:20:30,000 so the other issue that is is now a case is that  291 00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:32,340 it's no longer questions of basic sanitation   292 00:20:32,340 --> 00:20:36,102 we have real sophisticated adulteration 293 00:20:36,102 --> 00:20:41,775 we have chemistry departments, chemistry, sort of labs within non-compliant firms 294 00:20:41,775 --> 00:20:47,282 that don't try to ensure quality provision but are actively using different types of chemicals  295 00:20:47,282 --> 00:20:50,700 to sort of cheat the standard-setting monitors   296 00:20:51,480 --> 00:20:55,171 So eventually the Chinese government realized that  297 00:20:55,171 --> 00:20:58,018 its fragmented regulatory system 298 00:20:58,018 --> 00:21:03,720 with different governing systems operating independently of one another at different scales   299 00:21:03,720 --> 00:21:11,940 really had to come together in order to form a  multi-scale integrated coherent food safety system   300 00:21:13,320 --> 00:21:15,563 now how do I know what I know 301 00:21:15,563 --> 00:21:20,645 I conducted 170 interviews throughout China in nine different study sites 302 00:21:20,645 --> 00:21:24,653 I try to vary them in terms of  level of economic development 303 00:21:24,653 --> 00:21:27,567 in terms of geography, in terms of food risk 304 00:21:27,567 --> 00:21:32,905 it's important  to note that food safety is a very politically sensitive issue 305 00:21:32,905 --> 00:21:36,910 I spent most of my initial months of fieldwork 306 00:21:36,910 --> 00:21:39,234 and for those of you in graduate school 307 00:21:39,234 --> 00:21:44,100 I am more than happy to talk  to you about the travails of fieldwork in China   308 00:21:44,100 --> 00:21:47,497 but I spent most of my time getting kicked out of  counties 309 00:21:47,497 --> 00:21:51,069 it did not help that I was Japanese and American 310 00:21:51,069 --> 00:21:56,340 they thought I was some sort of hybrid  spy that wanted to make China look very very bad   311 00:21:56,340 --> 00:22:02,460 it got so bad that there was a circular which I  suppose I'm somewhat proud of from Beijing that   312 00:22:02,460 --> 00:22:06,512 instructed agricultural officials not to let me know anything 313 00:22:06,512 --> 00:22:09,562 now I ran into an impasse 314 00:22:09,562 --> 00:22:15,590 and a completely unrelated issue actually paved  the way for me to do my fieldwork 315 00:22:15,590 --> 00:22:23,100 now for a couple reasons completely unrelated to my  research I went on a national dating show on TV   316 00:22:24,360 --> 00:22:32,193 and I made a bit of a splash you might say and as  a result of my quite excellent performance 317 00:22:32,193 --> 00:22:37,409 all of a sudden, this particular dating show is shown all throughout China 318 00:22:37,409 --> 00:22:42,165 watched by every single official throughout the country at least at that point in time 319 00:22:42,165 --> 00:22:45,310 and so all of a sudden, I started getting phone calls 320 00:22:45,310 --> 00:22:48,480 and they said hey Japanese devil spy 321 00:22:48,480 --> 00:22:52,654 we would like you to come back to our county because clearly you're a patriot 322 00:22:52,654 --> 00:22:56,903 clearly you're a good person and we always like people like you around 323 00:22:56,903 --> 00:23:01,440 so all of a sudden I was invited  to all the counties that I've been kicked out of   324 00:23:01,440 --> 00:23:07,042 so if you want to talk about multi-method research,  always happy to discuss that 325 00:23:07,042 --> 00:23:08,836 so moving on now 326 00:23:08,836 --> 00:23:10,651 back to serious land 327 00:23:10,651 --> 00:23:14,400 so what I'm going to do now is  we're going to focus on two regulatory solutions   328 00:23:14,400 --> 00:23:16,937 that the state has employed to address food safety  329 00:23:16,937 --> 00:23:19,557 we're going to look at a top-down approach 330 00:23:19,557 --> 00:23:23,815 to the use of coordinating bodies and then we're going  to look at a bottom-up approach 331 00:23:23,815 --> 00:23:25,634 through model production bases 332 00:23:25,634 --> 00:23:31,117 now the book manuscript which if any of you are interested I'm happy to send to you   333 00:23:31,117 --> 00:23:37,713 provided you provide many comments but we're  going to focus on these two elements 334 00:23:37,713 --> 00:23:40,933 these two regulatory solutions today 335 00:23:40,933 --> 00:23:46,094 so first coordinating bodies: they are a top-down approach 336 00:23:46,094 --> 00:23:51,128 now there have been a parade of these coordinating bodies that have been established in China 337 00:23:51,128 --> 00:23:55,736 in 2003 we had the State Food and Drug Administration, it failed in its task 338 00:23:55,736 --> 00:24:01,768 in 2008 this was taken over by the Ministry of Health, it didn't do such a good job  339 00:24:01,768 --> 00:24:05,205 Ministry of Health took over...sorry, the Ministry of Health was 2008 340 00:24:05,205 --> 00:24:10,000 and 2010 there was a national food  safety commission that was created 341 00:24:10,000 --> 00:24:15,176 and the newest reiteration of this coordination body technique is  now the China Food and Drug Administration 342 00:24:15,176 --> 00:24:20,971 which is going to serve as a super Ministry to basically  integrate China's food safety system 343 00:24:20,971 --> 00:24:26,895 the idea is that you want to create a single reference point for the entire system 344 00:24:26,895 --> 00:24:34,080 and coordinating bodies basically under operate in accordance with food safety from the national scale   345 00:24:35,160 --> 00:24:41,100 it creates a single reference point, it streams lines accountability, and then also it works out   346 00:24:41,100 --> 00:24:46,620 different sort of bureaucratic turf wars that  emerge between different governing scales    347 00:24:46,620 --> 00:24:52,620 and across agencies, it reflects a pretty pragmatic approach to deal with food safety   348 00:24:52,620 --> 00:24:56,829 after all doing a comprehensive overhaul of the  entire food safety bureaucracy 349 00:24:56,829 --> 00:25:03,492 is politically too difficult to do but developing the specialized unit to kind of sort things out 350 00:25:03,492 --> 00:25:10,253 between scales and between agencies is a very pragmatic cost-efficient way to deal with these things 351 00:25:10,253 --> 00:25:16,831 but again scale politics emerge to confuse and confound  even the best of our regulators 352 00:25:16,831 --> 00:25:20,200 if we just focus on the jurisdictional dimension of scale 353 00:25:20,200 --> 00:25:22,700 you will notice that these coordinating bodies are pretty   354 00:25:22,700 --> 00:25:27,600 it's pretty clear in the law of how the different jurisdictions are supposed to... 355 00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:30,808 smaller jurisdictions are supposed to work within larger jurisdiction 356 00:25:30,808 --> 00:25:36,401 it's all very clear which is why it's so important to realize that scale has other are implications 357 00:25:36,401 --> 00:25:40,554 for the way that regulators sort of view their political world 358 00:25:40,554 --> 00:25:43,980 because once we turn to the managerial dimension of scale   359 00:25:44,700 --> 00:25:49,500 the SFDA and the Food Safety Committees and  other coordinating bodies are interested in   360 00:25:49,500 --> 00:25:55,680 national strategies, right? What I mentioned before setting up monitoring networks across the nation   361 00:25:55,680 --> 00:26:02,737 lowering mass contaminations and bringing China  into line with global food safety standards 362 00:26:02,737 --> 00:26:09,900 now that's their business but at the local level  they are far more interested in the creation   363 00:26:09,900 --> 00:26:16,980 and the day-to-day tasks of food safety management, it's which farms do you visit on which day   364 00:26:16,980 --> 00:26:24,513 looking at taking pork urine samples I went on a  little field trip with one official 365 00:26:24,513 --> 00:26:32,136 who is looking at Pork insurance issues and I had to...l was  asked to help to move a dead pig onto a truck 366 00:26:32,337 --> 00:26:37,964 I said I have a problem with pigs and that was the  only thing I could come up with so I didn't have to do it 367 00:26:37,964 --> 00:26:44,280 so then they asked me to hold the ear because every pig has a little ear tag in it    368 00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:48,591 so I ended up walking around with this  dead pig ear for most of the day 369 00:26:48,591 --> 00:26:56,100 so that's the day-to-day task and so how do you begin to integrate these tasks and strategies and officials   370 00:26:56,100 --> 00:27:01,860 were absolutely frustrated with one another, because one official put it most succinctly   371 00:27:01,860 --> 00:27:06,352 and he said look the Food Safety Committees  and the coordinating bodies 372 00:27:06,352 --> 00:27:09,342 they have their plans and we have our work 373 00:27:09,342 --> 00:27:14,623 and driving most of the problems...is this concept in Chinese governance 374 00:27:14,623 --> 00:27:18,226 "xie tiao", to coordinate, which is an empty term 375 00:27:18,226 --> 00:27:21,210 because no one knows what to coordinate actually means 376 00:27:21,210 --> 00:27:25,452 because none of these agencies had  anything written by laws 377 00:27:25,855 --> 00:27:30,814 about how to succumb technical personnel from different  agencies from different scales 378 00:27:30,814 --> 00:27:33,776 how to share resources, how to divvy up these tasks   379 00:27:33,776 --> 00:27:36,840 none of this was specified, the only coordination that happened 380 00:27:36,840 --> 00:27:42,995 was a single yearly meeting where tasks were doled out, it was often referred to 381 00:27:42,995 --> 00:27:46,194 as the Japanese emperor organization meeting 382 00:27:46,194 --> 00:27:50,613 I thought that was quite interesting, given of my Japanese extraction   383 00:27:50,613 --> 00:27:54,780 and I said so why do you call  it a Japanese emperor organization they said well   384 00:27:55,740 --> 00:28:00,540 just like your Japanese emperor, I said I'm American please, he said right just like your Japanese emperor 385 00:28:00,540 --> 00:28:07,320 just like the Japanese emperor, it's largely symbolic so they're a sideline   386 00:28:07,320 --> 00:28:11,693 these food safety committees that were operating on a national scale logic 387 00:28:11,693 --> 00:28:14,471 sideline and the local regulatory apparatus 388 00:28:15,237 --> 00:28:18,382 then you had issues that evolved in the knowledge related dimension 389 00:28:18,382 --> 00:28:24,120 as I mentioned, the SFDA, the FSC and  these different coordinating bodies   390 00:28:24,120 --> 00:28:29,276 were very interested in implementing national certification programs that were... 391 00:28:29,276 --> 00:28:36,060 that had  evolved and developed from interfacing with  global food safety scientific qualities 392 00:28:36,060 --> 00:28:41,575 now the problem was of course local agricultural  agencies had their own standards 393 00:28:41,575 --> 00:28:46,166 that they've been developing, thousands and thousands of local regulatory standards 394 00:28:46,166 --> 00:28:47,940 township named Blood Oranges   395 00:28:47,940 --> 00:28:57,960 or Cixi Bayberry Production or what's another one that I saw...it was Dengwo Villages Catfish Production standard 396 00:28:57,960 --> 00:29:03,549 everybody had their different standards  and no one again was clear exactly 397 00:29:03,549 --> 00:29:10,862 how their local standards fit into these more generalized  scientific-based standards, it wasn't worked out 398 00:29:10,862 --> 00:29:16,740 so either people said well our standards are in compliance when they didn't really know if it was   399 00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:23,700 or they basically just said well you know our  things are safe, our standards are good for us   400 00:29:23,700 --> 00:29:29,700 and the SFDA they can do whatever they want but  it doesn't really make sense in our context here   401 00:29:30,540 --> 00:29:36,420 so ironically, coordination bodies which were supposed to sort out the fragmentation within the system 402 00:29:36,420 --> 00:29:41,940 led to more fragmentation and  not only did you have more fragmentation   403 00:29:41,940 --> 00:29:51,188 you created an additional bureaucratic unit now that was actively trying to fight against other agencies within a locality 404 00:29:51,188 --> 00:29:55,140 and all because of completely different scale orientation   405 00:29:55,980 --> 00:30:04,620 so one story I think really highlights this sort of dynamic very well, I was out in the townships 406 00:30:04,620 --> 00:30:10,800 walking around with the Aquatic Bureau  guys one day and we were looking at catfish ponds   407 00:30:10,800 --> 00:30:15,414 and so by the end of the night they delivered me back to the Local Food Safety Committee 408 00:30:15,576 --> 00:30:21,227 another big banquet more baijiu and fish came out now 409 00:30:21,227 --> 00:30:24,531 I've been walking around looking at the  condition of these fish farms all-day 410 00:30:24,531 --> 00:30:27,393 so I did not want to eat the catfish 411 00:30:27,393 --> 00:30:30,807 so I'm there and I'm not touching the catfish 412 00:30:30,807 --> 00:30:34,944 and the food safety director turns to his deputy and he goes   413 00:30:36,120 --> 00:30:42,780 the Japanese devil isn't eating the fish, he's been out with our aquatic bureau guys all-day   414 00:30:43,380 --> 00:30:51,060 don't eat the fish, which just you know, I was like please quote this, this is very good   415 00:30:51,060 --> 00:30:57,120 but you know I really highlight how divorced, you know, and the different perspectives and   416 00:30:57,120 --> 00:31:01,935 the lack of information flow that was occurring between these different agencies 417 00:31:01,935 --> 00:31:05,754 now of course I'm highlighting a single causal mechanism 418 00:31:05,754 --> 00:31:08,753 based on a few case studies here right so what we're   419 00:31:08,753 --> 00:31:12,995 interested then is the generalizability of this proposition 420 00:31:12,995 --> 00:31:16,140 is this occurring in a widespread fashion 421 00:31:16,140 --> 00:31:21,484 I managed to get my hands on a 2012  Ministry of Agriculture survey 422 00:31:21,484 --> 00:31:24,774 which looked at 212 municipalities 423 00:31:24,774 --> 00:31:26,856 and it showed that 60 percent of them 424 00:31:26,856 --> 00:31:30,000 had actually followed through an established coordination bodies 425 00:31:30,161 --> 00:31:31,840 but the key interesting fact is that 426 00:31:31,840 --> 00:31:35,332 80 percent of them that had established coordinating bodies 427 00:31:35,751 --> 00:31:39,300 still were conducting food safety inspections through individual agencies   428 00:31:39,300 --> 00:31:40,733 which suggests to me that 429 00:31:40,733 --> 00:31:45,031 this pattern of scale politics is fairly widespread throughout the country 430 00:31:45,288 --> 00:31:48,589 so top-down, not so good, 431 00:31:48,589 --> 00:31:52,137 what about a bottom-up approach: the policy experimentation   432 00:31:52,137 --> 00:31:56,307 on different model production bases the idea here was that 433 00:31:56,307 --> 00:31:57,960 rather than a top-down approach   434 00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:00,830 we deal with food safety from the bottom up 435 00:32:00,830 --> 00:32:04,806 we'd establish a model production bases throughout the country 436 00:32:04,806 --> 00:32:07,780 they would be allowed to experiment with better techniques 437 00:32:07,780 --> 00:32:10,320 put good infrastructure down   438 00:32:10,320 --> 00:32:15,870 put good cold storage facilities down, testing sites, training centers 439 00:32:15,870 --> 00:32:20,907 for farmers that were working on the land, high-quality inputs would be provided 440 00:32:20,907 --> 00:32:22,801 and throughout the 2000s 441 00:32:22,801 --> 00:32:26,736 about 50 to 60 thousand of these demonstration sites 442 00:32:26,736 --> 00:32:28,768 were put throughout the country 443 00:32:28,768 --> 00:32:34,339 the idea is that gradually these techniques would diffuse, people would learn 444 00:32:34,339 --> 00:32:38,118 and eventually, in the aggregate, food safety would improve 445 00:32:39,247 --> 00:32:43,440 now a great deal of work  about the benefits of policy experimentation   446 00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:49,312 have been written about by Sebastian Heilman who does a fascinating account 447 00:32:49,312 --> 00:32:51,987 of why policy experimentation is so great 448 00:32:51,987 --> 00:32:55,857 I don't take issue with that but in the case of food safety where   449 00:32:55,857 --> 00:33:02,567 you require a comprehensive national integrated system, the key question becomes 450 00:33:02,567 --> 00:33:09,597 how does a disparate sort of groupings of food safety production sites 451 00:33:09,597 --> 00:33:10,904 actually coherent to a   452 00:33:10,904 --> 00:33:15,134 national system, what's the regulatory template for integration 453 00:33:15,900 --> 00:33:19,390 because on the network related dimension 454 00:33:19,390 --> 00:33:26,067 as producers tried to sort of diffuse practices to local producers and to wholesalers    455 00:33:26,067 --> 00:33:31,684 one of the major problems is that they couldn't defuse their practices off the base 456 00:33:32,087 --> 00:33:34,638 there was a fundamental trust issue that occurred 457 00:33:34,638 --> 00:33:38,548 one, individual on the base didn't want to cooperate with local producers 458 00:33:38,548 --> 00:33:45,060 because their quality was low they weren't capable of 459 00:33:45,060 --> 00:33:53,040 complying with high quality, sort of high-level industrialized agricultural practices and   460 00:33:53,040 --> 00:33:56,925 they couldn't be relied on to deliver food in a timely manner 461 00:33:56,925 --> 00:33:58,925 at the volumes that are required   462 00:34:00,420 --> 00:34:02,093 and local producers themselves 463 00:34:02,093 --> 00:34:05,520 when I asked them if they would like to participate on the base 464 00:34:05,520 --> 00:34:07,720 they said no we don't like working with those guys 465 00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:10,260 first of all they gouge us with prices all the time 466 00:34:10,260 --> 00:34:15,494 they make us buy these expensive inputs  I never recover any of my money and 467 00:34:15,494 --> 00:34:19,291 their grading system for how they price produce is... 468 00:34:19,291 --> 00:34:22,516 I'm completely bewildered, there is a black box 469 00:34:22,516 --> 00:34:25,553 they didn't use the term black box but more or less 470 00:34:25,553 --> 00:34:29,085 that was the gist of their point and so as a result   471 00:34:29,820 --> 00:34:35,400 it couldn't expand sort of scale up through the  network and then another interesting problem   472 00:34:35,400 --> 00:34:38,327 emerged on the jurisdictional level now 473 00:34:38,327 --> 00:34:42,480 as you're trying to develop a coherent system and trying to   474 00:34:42,480 --> 00:34:45,581 get all these model production bases to speak to one another 475 00:34:45,581 --> 00:34:49,491 to actually kind of develop a single regulatory template 476 00:34:49,491 --> 00:34:57,019 one of the issues that began to develop was well so how does my food safety   477 00:34:57,060 --> 00:35:01,155 standard and production protocol actually match up 478 00:35:01,155 --> 00:35:04,380 with protocols developed in another province   479 00:35:04,380 --> 00:35:06,680 in another County how does that actually work out  480 00:35:06,680 --> 00:35:10,000 because there's no really regulatory template that can 481 00:35:10,000 --> 00:35:16,436 serve that purpose and so in 2006 food safety Experts Thompson and who wrote 482 00:35:16,436 --> 00:35:21,809 a great paper on this talk about the Luo Fei Yu Incident of 2006 483 00:35:21,809 --> 00:35:25,180 the Turbo Fish Incident of 2006 484 00:35:25,800 --> 00:35:28,237 Shanghai inspectors went over to Shandong Province 485 00:35:28,237 --> 00:35:31,447 and they found out that Shandon's fishery production bases 486 00:35:31,447 --> 00:35:37,380 were not in line with Shanghai standards  that they were using particular additives that   487 00:35:37,380 --> 00:35:42,443 were subpar and so Shanghai said to Shandong they said 488 00:35:42,443 --> 00:35:44,580 all right you've got to come up to our standards 489 00:35:44,580 --> 00:35:48,992 fix your problem, otherwise you can't  send any of your fish to the market 490 00:35:48,992 --> 00:35:52,469 Shandong said well no one else seems to have a problem 491 00:35:52,469 --> 00:35:54,227 so we're not going to change 492 00:35:54,227 --> 00:35:56,421 and Shanghai then unilaterally   493 00:35:56,421 --> 00:35:59,557 closed its Market to Shandong after that happened  494 00:35:59,557 --> 00:36:03,180 Guangzhou followed soon Beijing followed soon  495 00:36:03,180 --> 00:36:09,456 Chongqing followed soon and it was only until a few years later 496 00:36:09,456 --> 00:36:15,326 when the fishery associations of these different provinces and municipalities  497 00:36:15,326 --> 00:36:19,046 managed to work out a agree sort of harmonizing standards 498 00:36:19,046 --> 00:36:23,100 that have emerged now this is  a single incident dealing with turbo fish   499 00:36:23,100 --> 00:36:27,955 you'll see this emerge in what is the proper protocol for greenhouse production 500 00:36:27,955 --> 00:36:31,631 what is the proper protocol for blood orange production  501 00:36:31,631 --> 00:36:35,760 right, that all conflict across the gamut   502 00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:41,580 and as a result what you see is a regulatory  balkanization of the system because there is   503 00:36:41,580 --> 00:36:46,235 no template to scale up from these model production bases 504 00:36:46,840 --> 00:36:49,114 so scale politics on the   505 00:36:49,114 --> 00:36:55,380 network and jurisdictional dimensions of  scale led to failed national integration   506 00:36:56,580 --> 00:36:59,651 it's important to note that what I'm talking about  507 00:36:59,651 --> 00:37:03,344 is a consistent pattern of regulatory failure   508 00:37:04,980 --> 00:37:10,891 but that there is important variation it's not that all coordination bodies in China fail 509 00:37:10,891 --> 00:37:14,595 or all  policy experimentation through model production bases fail 510 00:37:14,595 --> 00:37:17,457 that's simply not the case, after all 511 00:37:17,457 --> 00:37:19,144 if we look at a cross-market type 512 00:37:19,144 --> 00:37:23,700 and I looked at the domestic export and organic markets in the export sector 513 00:37:23,700 --> 00:37:28,010 these sort of model production races and policy experimentation 514 00:37:28,010 --> 00:37:29,340 have done extraordinarily well 515 00:37:29,340 --> 00:37:33,017 in diffusing best practices to the broader population 516 00:37:33,819 --> 00:37:37,774 and if you look across province and county in terms of coordination bodies 517 00:37:37,774 --> 00:37:44,684 Ningxia, Shanghai extremely successful coordination body activities 518 00:37:44,684 --> 00:37:51,660 right what I'm trying to assert here though is that when there is regulatory failure 519 00:37:51,660 --> 00:37:55,321 a persistent pattern of scale politics  emerges 520 00:37:55,523 --> 00:37:58,369 that's pretty consistent across the board   521 00:37:58,920 --> 00:38:07,457 so in the beginning of my research when the directors of the SFDA talking to me 522 00:38:07,457 --> 00:38:14,009 I remember they they they sat me down and so I was there young, naive 523 00:38:14,009 --> 00:38:15,404 I suppose I'm still young   524 00:38:15,420 --> 00:38:17,242 not so much, but still young 525 00:38:17,242 --> 00:38:22,080 and I was there with armed with the best sort of knowledge of   526 00:38:22,080 --> 00:38:28,029 global regulatory best practices and at the end of the talk with this director 527 00:38:28,029 --> 00:38:29,400 he turns to me   528 00:38:29,400 --> 00:38:35,103 and he goes all right so tell me how you'd solve the problem 529 00:38:35,103 --> 00:38:39,159 240 million farmers over millions of processors more Distributors 530 00:38:39,159 --> 00:38:42,720 that you can count all with highly variant levels   531 00:38:42,720 --> 00:38:48,840 and capacities to provide safe food, build me a system, how can we do it better, you tell me   532 00:38:49,860 --> 00:38:52,365 and of course I sat there and then he proceeded to berate me 533 00:38:52,365 --> 00:38:54,970 on how I shouldn't criticize China   534 00:38:55,020 --> 00:39:00,000 but now I suppose my book is a bit of a love letter to that same director 535 00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:01,140 the way that I would   536 00:39:01,140 --> 00:39:06,166 go about answering it I would say look does your governing system scale 537 00:39:06,166 --> 00:39:08,706 are you aligning interests of your regulators 538 00:39:08,706 --> 00:39:10,916 across different scales 539 00:39:10,916 --> 00:39:13,980 are you cognizant and aware of the various dimensions of scale 540 00:39:13,980 --> 00:39:17,651 of how these things have to be integrated and then 541 00:39:17,651 --> 00:39:20,000 are you developing bridging organizations and linkage mechanisms 542 00:39:20,000 --> 00:39:25,200 that are necessarily to  bridge the divide due to these 543 00:39:25,200 --> 00:39:32,040 logic of scales that have been  developing and if they address these problems   544 00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:39,360 which is no easy task, I'm sure that they'll see some headway in their food safety dilemmas   545 00:39:40,260 --> 00:39:42,937 the implications for those of us who study China  546 00:39:42,937 --> 00:39:45,840 when we think about scale politics is that I think   547 00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:49,002 what we're seeing here at least in food safety and scale politics 548 00:39:49,002 --> 00:39:51,123 are really the limits of China's   549 00:39:51,300 --> 00:39:56,970 what it should say fragmented unitary model in terms of 550 00:39:56,970 --> 00:39:59,817 governance and addressing scale politics   551 00:39:59,817 --> 00:40:06,480 now for those of you familiar with  China you'll realize that there is always sort of   552 00:40:06,480 --> 00:40:10,554 a flux of regulatory power and power in general  553 00:40:10,554 --> 00:40:15,432 that kind of ebbs and flows moving from the center in Beijing to localities 554 00:40:15,432 --> 00:40:19,416 they're just waves of recentralization and decentralization 555 00:40:19,416 --> 00:40:22,708 sometimes it's referred to as "fang" or "shou" 556 00:40:22,708 --> 00:40:26,619 to let go of power and to constrain it back   557 00:40:26,619 --> 00:40:29,354 which creates a very unstable atmosphere 558 00:40:29,354 --> 00:40:32,700 to deal with the scale politics that I've gone to discuss   559 00:40:32,700 --> 00:40:39,314 the other issue is how sub-national units are  supposed to deal and relate to one another 560 00:40:39,314 --> 00:40:43,053 is also not very clear right which creates a recipe 561 00:40:43,053 --> 00:40:46,560 for the exact type of disruptive regulatory politics   562 00:40:46,560 --> 00:40:51,111 that I've discussed before the second issue I think is that 563 00:40:51,111 --> 00:40:58,529 when we think about China and its sort of entry into global governance organizations  564 00:40:58,529 --> 00:41:01,969 I think what you're going to see when we think about it in terms of scale 565 00:41:01,969 --> 00:41:07,380 is that China is going  to have a very very thin level of integration   566 00:41:08,220 --> 00:41:13,380 they can get everybody at the national  scale to comply and to look more like   567 00:41:13,380 --> 00:41:18,013 other countries operating at the global scale  but the problem that will be that 568 00:41:18,013 --> 00:41:22,998 because it's not integrated and linked to processes occurring at lower scales 569 00:41:22,998 --> 00:41:25,237 it's going  to be a thin level of integration 570 00:41:25,237 --> 00:41:28,608 which means that compliance issues are likely to continue   571 00:41:29,760 --> 00:41:31,837 now does this travel outside of China 572 00:41:31,837 --> 00:41:35,990 what are the comparative implications for the existence of scale politics 573 00:41:35,990 --> 00:41:40,920 are there for example better ways to address scale politics I think there are when   574 00:41:40,920 --> 00:41:44,838 when one chapter in my book looks specifically at the EU 575 00:41:44,838 --> 00:41:46,410 in the United States and India 576 00:41:46,410 --> 00:41:52,660 and in particularly the EU stands out as a regulatory entity 577 00:41:52,660 --> 00:41:55,829 that really has managed to solve the problem of scale   578 00:41:55,829 --> 00:41:58,601 through a multi-level governance  framework 579 00:41:58,601 --> 00:42:01,206 which I'm happy to talk about during Q&A 580 00:42:01,800 --> 00:42:06,338 the other thing is how does this all tie into authoritarian politics 581 00:42:08,031 --> 00:42:09,120 one of the issues of course is that 582 00:42:09,120 --> 00:42:14,465 in authoritarian regimes there is  a leaning towards 583 00:42:14,465 --> 00:42:17,207 having governance occur at the national level   584 00:42:17,207 --> 00:42:23,228 and having very subsidiary or smaller roles for governing systems at lower scales 585 00:42:23,228 --> 00:42:26,955 which means that they're going to face significant problems 586 00:42:26,955 --> 00:42:31,713 because they don't have this multi-scale collaboration that is necessary 587 00:42:31,713 --> 00:42:38,667 finally I've begun to sort of talk to individuals who work on other issues 588 00:42:38,667 --> 00:42:40,876 in terms of resource management 589 00:42:40,876 --> 00:42:44,331 in terms of environmental protection, oceans management 590 00:42:44,331 --> 00:42:49,354 who also are dealing with processes that are occurring at multiple scales 591 00:42:49,354 --> 00:42:54,600 and I believe scale politics will sort of help them sort out sort of   592 00:42:54,600 --> 00:42:57,859 the problems that they're seeing in governance in these other sectors 593 00:42:57,859 --> 00:43:03,004 so as I close I suppose one of the big take-home points 594 00:43:03,004 --> 00:43:07,871 that I would like to argue is that at least for those of us in political science 595 00:43:07,871 --> 00:43:13,895 we have an obligation  to really rethink about how scale matters 596 00:43:13,895 --> 00:43:20,846 and how processes occurring to occurring at higher and lower levels of scale 597 00:43:20,846 --> 00:43:22,620 are interconnected   598 00:43:22,620 --> 00:43:27,223 and have important ramifications on  governance outcomes 599 00:43:27,223 --> 00:43:31,456 we've largely missed this in our discussion of governance 600 00:43:31,456 --> 00:43:37,911 and I guess the more unnerving fact is that while things like corruption and inequality 601 00:43:37,911 --> 00:43:42,060 might be long-simmering issues that threaten the legitimacy of the party   602 00:43:42,840 --> 00:43:48,000 constant food safety scandals really  do erode the legitimacy of the party   603 00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:55,886 as far as a system that can adequately  deal with a complex difficult market society 604 00:43:55,886 --> 00:44:01,140 which gives some truth to the  old adage that all countries are about   605 00:44:01,140 --> 00:44:05,228 seven meals away from revolution so thank you very much for your time [Applause]