Rethinking the liberation of China’s seed market: a comparative study of China’s regulatory frameworks with EU and US

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on interviews with China’s seed governance authorities, agricultural research institutes and seed companies, this paper aims at better understanding the transition of China’s seed governance systems by looking into the revisions of China’s Seed Law since 1949. With the latest dramatic transformation of China’s domestic seed market, and the strong presence of Chinese agribusiness in the global seed market, a closer examination of China’s laws and regulations on the domestic seed industry is not only justified, but much needed. Counteracting the prevailing positive assessment on these new changes from the government and the seed companies, in this paper, I show that China’s seed governance is moving from a precautionary system that resembles the European path to a system featuring self-governance with strengthened legal means that shares more similarities with the US path. Such a system transition will lead to the rising power of China’s large agribusiness companies globally, in contrast with increasingly weakened seed governance and a more problematic future for seed sovereignty.