Multimodality, Transparency, and Food Safety in China

Abstract

In September 2008, revelation of melamine‐contaminated milk supplies in China's dairy industry rocked its manufacturing sector still reeling from highly publicized food and safety scandals in 2007. Despite state and corporate interventions, regulatory and quality management issues highlighted in these earlier scandals remained. Local government and corporate actors’ attempts to suppress information about the scandal highlighted concerns about transparency, accountability, and corruption. This article is based on ethnographic research conducted in 2009 and 2010 in Beijing and Shanghai and across 2012 and 2013 in Beijing and China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. My goals are twofold. First, I seek to move forward discussions of transparency in China, which often suffer from easy dismissals by academics, the media and the public alike. Second, I aim to broaden our understanding of transparency as not just fulfilling multiple functions but also as multimodal in that it is actively produced across different scales of experience and through diverse mechanisms. Using data focused on the production and monitoring of food safety, I describe the structural challenges that led to the 2008 scandal, the measures implemented in the industry to prevent future problems, and the broader discussions and interventions designed to improve China's overall food safety record.