Regulation in China

This chapter discusses regulation in China. The country has undergone phenomenal transformations in the past few decades; yet its regulatory capacity remains generally weak. This weakness, however, is not uniform across sectors. This chapter attempts to account for this variability, with examples from China's food safety regulatory regime. Various theoretical concepts related to regulation are introduced to explain the regime's features, including the three components of a regulatory regime (standard-setting, information-gathering and behavior-modification), regulatory state, interest theories and roles of regulators. The chapter ends with a discussion on the internationalization of regulation in China, and argues that China is engaged in a “shallow integration”.