Regulating biotechnology in China: the politics of biosafety

This working paper looks at the politics of biosafety regulation and risk assessment in China&rsquo;s growing biotech industry with respect to genetically modified (GM) crops.The central question examined in this study asks who has the authority and legitimacy to make decisions about risks of a new technology such as GM crops.<br /><br />To this purpose, the author explores:<br /> biosafety debates in wider contexts nationally and internationally background developments of the Chinese regulatory system biosafety decision-making in practice around GM crops - whether they are harmful to the environment or human health alternative approaches to risk, uncertainty and precaution to the biosafety regulation in China&rsquo;s policy processes in relation to agricultural trade and food security policy choices.Key findings of this study are:<br /> China has invested in and developed new technologies rapidly in its modernisation drive. In the case of agricultural biotechnology, it plans to improve the livelihoods of a still huge rural farming population. the ability to effectively channel resources in China is reflected in its traditions of planning and mobilisation, which are still strongly routed in present-day politics and bureaucracy the processes of biosafety regulation and risk assessment for GM crops are at the heart of the policy process in China; however, the science-policy arena that handles biosafety has become a terrain for debating on biotechnology in a way that is different to other political settings. There is evidence of more civil society activism, legal actions and media campaigns regulation of Bt cotton and food crops: regulators are defending China&rsquo;s interests, especially in relation to foreign corporations or imports, but are not focusing on environmental impacts and challenges central to its future development path, policy elites in China need to associate with wide range of stakeholders to able to manage the risks and potential benefits associated with both biotechnology and the other new technologies identified.