Cool Thinking? the Role of the State in Shaping China's Dairy Sector and Its Knowledge System

Abstract

The article looks at the role of China's party-state in the national dairy development program over the last two decades. The state has been developmental in creating conditions for growth while the industry has experienced continuous reform and restructuring. One outstanding issue is that the focus on growth has not led to improved efficiency or to improved product quality in many parts of the sector. The state appears to have lost sight of the strategic role it could play in developing the knowledge system in the sector, which should provide the inputs to deal with these issues of quality and efficiency. It is concluded that the state actors at central and local levels have endeavored to act as an aggregate developmental state in the sector mode, and not only in the territorial mode. It is argued, however, that the state has followed and persists in pursuing an interventionist, "hands-on" developmental approach, rather than abstaining from direct interference at the operational level. Continued state ownership of the extension services and most of the dairy plants and the imposition of control over potentially free and democratic farmers' organizations testify to a party- state reluctant to give up control and promote market-based institutional innovation in dialogue with the operators within the industry.