Balancing technological innovation and environmental regulation: an analysis of Chinese agricultural biotechnology governance

Abstract China faces particular challenges in governing GMOs. In relation to technology development it has a ‘first-world’ level of technical capacity. In other respects, however, it faces a series of challenges more characteristic of a developing country. These include managing a very large smallholder sector, limited administrative capacity in some areas, and a political system where there are clear limits on the degree of debate and transparency around controversial issues. The Chinese case is also special in that the initiative for developing GM crops has largely come from the state, and technologies have in the main been developed by state institutes. At the same time the state has had to manage international processes around GMOs, along with domestic regulation and risk assessment. This article examines how China manages these different roles. It analyses how different biotechnology discourses play out through these institutional arrangements in case studies of Bt cotton and GM rice. Acknowledgements Thanks to Peter Newell, Jillian Popkins and Graeme Smith and anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier version of this paper. The author is responsible for the final version. This paper draws on research material from the DFID-funded project ‘Biotechnology Policy Processes in Developing Countries’. Notes 1. San nong (three ‘nongs’: nongmin, nongye, nongcun) is a common rural development policy term referring to farmers, agriculture and rural areas. 2. Deng Xiaoping for instance was quoted as saying: ‘Solving tomorrow's agricultural problems in the end will come down to biotechnology, to relying on the most sophisticated technologies’ (863 Committee, Citation2001: 36). 3. Interviews with officials in the Ministry of Science and Technology suggest that the proposed development of the Star Wars missile defence system was a key stimulus. 4. http://english.sina.com/china/1/2005/0519/31660.html 5. China Daily (2002) Nation to draft laws on biosafety, 8 April. More recently a statement was made on the SEPA Biodiversity website, ‘Our country will implement a GMO biosafety law’, 19 May 2005 (‘Wo guo jiang zhiding: “Zhuan jiyin shengwu anquan fa”’) (http://www.biodiv.gov.cn/swdyx/144398862075822080/20050520/7840.shtml). 6. SEPA official, personal communication (2004). 7. Hajer illustrates his argument using a case study of acid rain in UK and the Netherlands. He argues that two key coalitions are identifiable: a traditional pragmatist coalition and an ecological modernisation coalition. For analysis of the role of discourse coalitions in environmental policy processes see Keeley and Scoones (Citation2003). 8. Personal communication, Chinese policy researcher, Beijing (2003). 9. The exact extent of Monsanto's influence is hard to gauge. Interviews with individual Chinese scientists suggest that informal links to Monsanto through study tours, periods of study at universities in the US, joint authorship of articles with Monsanto staff, or personal links with Chinese Monsanto employees can be quite strong. These links are generally not publicised. More generally foreign companies can push for influence through foreign trade talks. In relation to the trade in GM soya foreign companies were able to put substantial pressure on the Chinese government through US Secretaries for Trade and Agriculture. 10. Personal communication, Chinese ecological scientist (2002). Transparency in relation to funding proposals has been a problem and something that the Ministry of Science and Technology now claims to be addressing (see SciDevNet (2004) ‘China to make research funding more transparent’, 15 September). 11. Personal communications, Biosafety Committee member and SEPA official, Beijing (2002 and 2003). 12. ‘GM cotton has become the “miracle crop” of China since its commercial growth was first permitted in 1996, and more than a half of China's cotton is now GM. One of the main reasons for this success, say its advocates, it that it has both helped farmers to cut their production costs by an average of almost 30 per cent, and reduce their exposure to chemicals' (SciDevNet (2004) ‘China urged to step up GM efforts’, 5 March). 13. See, for example, SciDevNet (2004) ‘China urged to step up GM efforts’, 5 March; The Economist (2002) ‘Biotech's yin and yang’, 12 December. 14. GM maize and soya bean imports are permitted, but only in processed form. 15. For maize multinationals such as Monsanto, Syngenta and DuPont would be in a more competitive position relative to Chinese researchers. In wheat, technologies are less developed. 16. See The Economist (2005) ‘Genetically modified rice’, 28 April; SciDevNet (2005) GM rice ‘good for Chinese farmers’ health and wealth’, 29 April. 17. The varieties are Xianyou-63 an insect-resistant Bt rice developed by Zhang Qifa, and Youming-86 (insect resistant with the CPTI gene) developed by Zhu Zhen (Huang et al., Citation2005). 18. The Economist (2004) ‘Soya on rice to go: Brazil and China are set to commercialise genetically modified crops’, 18 November. 19. Interview with Cheng Jinggen, Biosafety Office, Ministry of Agriculture (2002). 20. See SciDevNet (2005) ‘China to assess claim illegal rice entered the food chain’, 14 April; Greenpeace report available at http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/scandal-greenpeace-exposes-il 21. Rice biotechnologist and Biosafety Committee member Jia Shirong comments: ‘We have environmental safety reports. What is more, when we give the go-ahead China will take a cautious attitude, approving on a province-by-province basis, guaranteeing that GM rice varieties will not out-cross’ (Liu, Citation2004). 22. Personal communication, Biosafety Committee member, Beijing (2002).

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