Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

You probably missed China's latest exercise of food power involving shrimp from Ecuador. President Daniel Noboa went to China in August and was rewarded with restoration of 8 Ecuadorian shrimp exporters that China had suspended earlier. The events leading up to Noboa's visit outline an emerging pattern: China creates a large export market for a trading partner, sets novel approval procedures or standards to manage the flow of imports, and China rejects products or suspends exporters when Chinese leaders want to gain power over their trading partner.  China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs highlighted Ecuador President Neboa's visit to China  August 2026. Over the past decade shrimp quietly became Ecuador's top export after petroleum, and China accounted for about half of the South American country's shrimp exports in 2025. China's annual imports of shrimp from Ecuador exceeded $3 billion during 2022-25, up spectacularly from about $100,000 in 2017.  China custo...

China has launched a 9-month crackdown on illegal pesticides and veterinary drugs after news media exposed illegal production, distribution and use of the substances. The crackdown conducted by seven government departments is being launched this month (July 2026) and will continue through the end of March 2027, according to an official news release . The campaign includes the agriculture ministry, law enforcement and prosecutorial organizations, market regulators, and the quasi-government Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives.  This is the latest of many campaigns in China to address pesticide and veterinary drug residues as food safety problems going back three decades.  Shanghai-based The Paper 's announcement of the latest crackdown was careful to depict illegal drugs and underground workshops as isolated incidents and problems that need to be rooted out before causing bigger problems. The crackdown appears to have been triggered by a May 28 Chinese news media re...

Chinese state media announced results of last year's crackdown on fraudulent meat and vegetable oil conducted by China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR). The news issued during the "two session" political meetings in Beijing is surely meant to reassure citizens outraged by rampant reports of premium cooking oil and lamb barbecue diluted with cheap substitutes. A deeper dive reveals that it's impractical to completely eliminate food fraud. According to reports in State media , market regulators held a campaign in 2025 to address public concerns about adulteration, counterfeiting and false labeling of meat products and vegetable oils. During the campaign regulators reportedly inspected 4.55 million meat and cooking oil products across the country, found 461,200 problems, closed 4,297 illegal online stores and accounts, and ordered platforms to delete over 11,000 pieces of false or misleading information. They punished 1708 people, assessed fines of...

A country with a bad food safety record aspires to lead a new approach to setting food safety practices in international trade. This is part of China's plan to leverage its Belt & Road Initiative in order to boost its influence in setting international rules, standards, and inspection practices. So far, it's off to a slow start. On October 15, China's customs administration held a meeting  of its 2-year-old "Import & Export Food Safety Cooperation Mechanism for the Countries of the Belt and Road Initiative" in Shanghai with participants from food agencies and embassies of 21 Belt and Road countries.  Director General of the Customs Administration Sun Meijun stated that China's customs administration is willing to work with food safety authorities of all countries to collaborate on food safety regulation and promote safer and more efficient trade in food and agricultural products. At the meeting member countries affirmed the "Shanghai Declaration o...

China continued rejecting relatively large numbers of U.S. food shipments in the first 4 months of 2025, according to Chinese customs reports. A rising trend in Chinese rejections of U.S. food shipments has been underway since 2020 for no particular reason. The European Union and United States had the largest number of food shipments rejected by China's customs inspectors during the first 4 months of 2025. China's customs administration reported rejecting 207 shipments of food from the European Union and 154 shipments of U.S. food during January to April 2025. These two trade partners were way ahead of others in rejections. Japan had the 3rd-largest number of rejections with 81, followed by Brazil (68), Malaysia (66), Vietnam (54), and Taiwan (50). In all, China rejected 1,180 shipments from 50 countries and regions with a volume of 19,187 metric tons.  Chart shows trade partners that had 50 or more rejections. Compiled from China customs administration reports. Most rejections...

Chinese market regulators have launched crackdowns on adulteration and fraud in cooking oil and meat industries. Chinese authorities have claimed to have solved these food safety and fraud problems on multiple occasions over the past 30 years.  Fraud and adulteration in China's cooking oil industry will be the focus of a crackdown announced by the State Administration of Market Supervision and Regulation  that began April 12 and will continue through December 2025. The rectification will address prominent problems and illegal business behavior that threatens the quality and safety of edible oils, including: Adulteration and counterfeiting, including the sale of cheap oils as premium oils and passing off expired oils as new product. Excessive use of additives such as flavorings, fragrances, and pigments during the production and processing of vegetable oils. False labeling: unlabeled oils or products that inaccurately declare proportions of blended oils, failure to clearly labe...

"' Borax pork' appears in the market again, serious investigation! " was the headline of a Guangzhou Daily article posted on many Chinese web sites earlier this month--including official Xinhua News. The article warned consumers that inspectors found that market vendors used borax to keep their pork moist and fresh-looking in a food market in south China. This appears to be a straightforward warning to consumers. But picking apart this "news" shows how authorities carefully control reporting of problems to manage public opinion and deflect blame for problems. According to the "borax pork" warning, borax was discovered during a "surprise inspection" of two food market vendors selling meatballs and pork in Panyu--a manufacturing hub and satellite city of Guangzhou in south China. Inspectors seized a box of borax used by a vendor to clean pig intestines, and chemical testing detected borax in some samples of meat. The inspection was carried...

A country that hides poisoned soil, keeps food supplies secret, covers up animal diseases and is unable to count farmland, crops, or animals says it is tracking millions of imported food shipments with anal precision. A government that once covered up toxic infant formula until the 2008 Olympics were over is now sounding an alarm about the dangers of imported food. China's customs administration said last month they have discovered traces of the COVID-19 virus in 79 out of 1.49 MILLION samples taken from packages of imported frozen food since last year. That suggests a 0.0056 percent chance of encountering a virus. The chances of encountering a live virus are even lower, since most of these samples appear to have detected inactive remains of viruses. Authorities said: They had suspended imports from 129 foreign suppliers in 21 countries.  A further 110 companies had voluntarily stopped shipping to China.  Border inspectors have disinfected 18.98 million shipments of imported ...

As China's biggest city and one of its richest, Shanghai has a thriving food industry supplied mainly with products from other provinces and from overseas. Shanghai is on the leading edge of a national trend of adding food miles and degrees of separation between consumers and farms. A thriving, gradually maturing industry is growing rapidly to get tasty food to consumers. But the trend also creates safety risks and opportunities for criminal food fraud.  An annual "white paper" by Shanghai's market supervision authority  posted on the central government's web site is meant to assure Chinese consumers that authorities have food safety under control.  The report says Shanghai is becoming a "food distribution city" as the number of local food producers plummets. In 2020, 80 percent of the food consumed in Shanghai came from outside the municipality. The ratio was up 10 percentage points from five years earlier, according to the report.  Relatively few local...

A Consumer Daily reporter investigating meat markets in China's hinterland found that the strict food safety regulatory apparatus was just an empty shell in towns and villages.  The reporter visited meat markets in several small towns in Xichuan County in Henan Province's southwest corner. Towns and villages in this area line the rivers flowing through mountain valleys into the Dujiangyan Reservoir, starting point of one of China's routes south-north water transfer to the parched northern regions. The reporter found that large villages usually had a couple of families engaged in pork trade, and most pigs were butchered by farmers and vendors. Examining freshly-slaughtered swine carcasses for sale in village markets, the Consumer Daily reporter found that expedience and tradition overrules regulatory requirements in the countryside. The reporter did not see the blue ink stamps required to prove the animals passed disease and sanitary inspections at an officially-sanctione...

Chinese officials found no Covid-19 virus during several days of nationwide testing of food markets in mid-June. Despite the absence of virus contamination, Chinese customs authorities stepped up monitoring of imported fish and meat, and Chinese importers began requesting overseas suppliers to certify that shipments bound for China were virus-free. Chinese disease control officials ordered nationwide testing in food markets last month after a new outbreak of Covid-19 was linked to Beijing's Xinfadi wholesale market, one of the largest food markets in the country. On June 13, the chairman of Xinfadi market announced that the virus had been found the previous day on a board used to slice imported salmon that had come from the Jing-Zhen seafood market. The chairman said that no Covid-19 virus had been detected in seafood or meat products tested in the market, and nine people who worked with the salmon also tested negative. Nevertheless, the market was closed and disinfected. On the...