CHINA
As China abolished its internal migration restrictions in the early 1990s, the number of farmers migrating to cities increased exponentially from 37.5 million in 1990 to 290.77 million in 2019. The number decreased gradually in the past few years due to the aging of the population and the increasing number of farm workers’ resettlement in cities. Driven by higher income, the majority of these migrant workers seek non-farming jobs in cities while keeping their rural household registration status and connections. Yet, the gap between the urban and rural household registration status has impaired their rights on accessing many services in cities, such as housing, health benefits, and schooling services. Addressing these challenges has been one of the top concerns of urban governance and development policies in China. China is also a significant sender of migrants to other countries, with a total of over 10.7 million Chinese in 94 countries in the South and 49 countries in the North. The outmigration is largely driven by its rapid economic growth in the past three decades, growth of investing overseas and students seeking degrees in foreign higher education institutions.
RESEARCH on CHINA
MiFOOD PAPERS
JOURNAL ARTICLES
Exploring a Novel Approach to Enhancing Urban Food Affordability: Assessing Subsidy Policies for Food Retailers in China
Urban food affordability is pivotal to achieving the second of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—Zero Hunger. This paper introduces fresh evidence and innovative practices from the Global South, focusing on retailer-side strategies to address urban food affordability issues. Specifically, it investigates the impact of China's policy on subsidizing and facilitating the establishment and operation of Affordable Food Shops (AFS). By analyzing policy documents and surveying food retailers in Nanjing, this study employs Propensity Score Matching (PSM) to quantitatively ...
Embedding Global Sustainable Development Goals in Local Agroecology Initiatives: Experiences from China
As part of sustainable agricultural innovations and the alternative food movement, agroecology provides important tools to achieve the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Yet very few existing studies have explicitly addressed their linkages. Synergies among the SDGs are often examined at the national level, overlooking nuanced opportunities revealed by small agroecology initiatives at the local scale. Based on literature review, field visits and semi-structured interviews with farms and relevant organizations in China, this research investigates how locally embedded agroecology practices lead ...
E-grocery as a New Site of Financialization? Financial Drivers of the Rise and Fall of China’s E-grocery Sector
During the past fve years, the e-grocery sector in China has experienced double-digit growth which accelerated at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Part of this hypergrowth was fueled by changing consumption patterns and pandemic-induced demand for contactless food delivery. However, this study highlights two other important but understudied drivers of the e-grocery boom -the rising financial investment and the deepening engagement of dot-com companies in the food retail sector. This study characterizes the recent financial investments in China’s e-grocery ...
New Immigrant Destinations and the Role of the Migration Industry: Moving Filipino Domestic Workers to Mainland China
In recent years, while scholarly work on new immigrant destinations (NIDs) within the United States and Europe has increased, little attention has been given the role and significance of the migration industry in promoting the emergence of NIDs. This is a particularly significant lacuna as some Asian nations are undergoing dramatic migration transition despite the lack of immigration regulatory infrastructure. In this context, focusing on the role of commercial intermediaries play in the formation of NIDs is an important perspective ...
The Nanjing Model: Comprehensive Food System Governance, Localization and Urban Food Security in China
Food supply localization has been extensively studied and advocated in North America and Europe, focusing on its oppositional stance to food system globalization, long food supply chains, the disconnect between producers and consumers, and a desire to reconnect urban consumers with small farmers in the hinterland of cities. The Northern model of city-region food localization has recently been taken up by governments, and promoted by international agencies such as the FAO and embedded in the New Urban Agenda (NUA) of ...
Governing for Food Security During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Wuhan and Nanjing, China
The global COVID-19 pandemic has elicited a range of public health governance responses. One common result has been an associated disruption of food supply chains and growing urban food insecurity. Policy responses to this situation have not yet received sufficient research attention. This paper therefore focuses on the urban food security implications of China's zero-COVID public health measures and the response of central, provincial and municipal government to the governance challenge of ensuring a stable and sufficient food supply to ...
Urban Food Insecurity and the Impact of China’s Affordable Food Shop (AFS) Program: A Case Study of Nanjing City
Food subsidies are widely implemented as part of government policies globally to mitigate food insecurity amongst the urban poor. Subsidies to retail outlets are one a type of supply-side subsidy designed to make food more affordable to low-income consumers. China's Affordable Food Shop (AFS) program introduced by the central government in 2011 and implemented by municipal governments is one example. To date, there has been little research examining the effectiveness of the AFS program despite more than a decade of ...
Did Household Income Loss Have an Immediate Impact on Animal-Source Foods Consumption during the Early Stage of the COVID-19 Pandemic?
The outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 caused extensive impact on household income and foods consumption. However, little attention has been paid to the immediate impact of income loss on animal-source foods consumption in the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aims to narrow this gap, and a total of 1301 valid samples of household food consumption surveys in Wuhan and Nanjing were obtained through specially designed online questionnaires. The surveys show that there were 69.6% (Wuhan) and 42.2% ...
Impacts of Community-Level Grassroots Organizations on Household Food Security During the COVID-19 Epidemic Period in China
Purchasing food via community-level grassroots organizations was a new pattern of food patronage for Wuhan residents during the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, but little attention was paid to it. The study examined the relationship between community-level grassroots organizations and household food insecurity based on an online survey of household food insecurity in Wuhan in March 2020. The study found that problems in all three domains of food insecurity including food anxiety, insufficient quality and inadequate quantity existed but were uneven. Community-level grassroots ...
Pathways to Food Insecurity: Migration, Hukou and COVID-19 in Nanjing, China
The COVID-19 pandemic has issued significant challenges to food systems and the food security of migrants in cities. In China, there have been no studies to date focusing on the food security of migrants during the pandemic. To fill this gap, an online questionnaire survey of food security in Nanjing City, China, was conducted in March 2020. This paper situates the research findings in the general literature on the general migrant experience during the pandemic under COVID and the specifics ...
Boon or Bane? Urban Food Security and Online Food Purchasing during the COVID-19 Epidemic in Nanjing, China
This paper examines the relationship between the rapid growth of online food purchasing and household food security during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in China using the city of Nanjing as a case study. The paper presents the results of an online survey of 968 households in Nanjing in March 2020 focused on their food purchasing behavior and levels of food security during the early weeks of the pandemic. While online food purchasing has increased rapidly in many ...
The Household Food Security Implications of Disrupted Access to Basic Services in Five Cities in the Global South
COVID-19 has caused significant disruptions regarding the extent to which households can access basic services and resources in cities around the world. Previous studies have indicated a predictive relationship between the consistency of resource access and food access among urban households. These investigations, however, have predominantly been isolated to Southern Africa and have not accounted for other dimensions of food security. To test whether these results are observable outside Southern Africa, and with a more multidimensional measure of food security, ...
Revisiting China’s Supermarket Revolution: Complementarity and Co-Evolution between Traditional and Modern Food Outlets
Like many emerging economies in the Global South, China is experiencing major transformations of its national and local food system characterized by the rise of supermarkets. There has been an ongoing debate on the relationship between supermarkets and wet markets in developing countries. Drawing on data from a city-wide supermarket mapping and surveys conducted in Nanjing in 2019, this paper revisits China’s “supermarket revolution” process and challenges the prediction of supermarket domination. It reveals that Nanjing’s food retailing system has ...
Comprehensive Food System Planning for Urban Food Security in Nanjing, China
Food system planning is important to achieve the goal of “zero hunger” in the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN, 2016). However, discussion about comprehensive planning for food security is scarce and little is known about the situation in Chinese cities. To narrow this gap, this study collected and analyzed four medium-term plans and two annual plans for the “vegetable basket project” in Nanjing, China. This study examines the strategies for urban food security in Nanjing to shed light ...
Emergency Food Supplies and Food Security in Wuhan and Nanjing, China, During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from a Field Survey
Motivation Detailed empirical work on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on food security is scant. Local management of food security has received little attention. Purpose This article describes emergency food policies in Wuhan and Nanjing, China during lockdown in 2020 and their implications for household food security in the two cities. Methods and approach Policy documents and background data describe the emergency measures. Online surveys of residents of two Chinese cities were used to gauge household food security. Findings ...
Factors Determining Household-Level Food Insecurity During COVID-19 Epidemic: A Case of Wuhan, China
Background: In coping with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic, cities adopted social isolation and lockdown measures; however, little is known about the impacts of these restrictions on household food security. Objective: This study provides a timely assessment of household food insecurity (HFI) in the Chinese city of Wuhan during the COVID-19 epidemic period and also investigates its determinant factors. Design: We collected valid data on food insecurity from 653 households in Wuhan via an online questionnaire in March 2020. The Household Food ...
RESEARCH PROJECTS
Role of Migrants in Urban Food Retailing: Wet Market Vendors and Takeaway Riders
This research focuses on understanding the characteristics of migrant takeaway riders and migrant vendors in wet markets, how they operate their businesses, and their role in Nanjing’s urban food system. It aims to investigate the following questions: Firstly, we intend to analyze the characteristics of these migrant workers in the two sectors, employing a comparative perspective to understand whether there is any difference in working time, food-buying sources, and incomeMoreover, we also intend to expand our survey coverage from urban ...
Understanding of the Reciprocal Links Between Migration and Food Security in Nanjing and the Nearby Changzhou Cities, China
The core issue of this research is to analyze food access, nutritional intake and food safety cognition level and their influencing factors among the migrants in China. Subsequently, we further make a comparative study and heterogeneity analysis from the flow direction (rural-to-urban and urban-to-urban migrants) and urban scale (regional central city Nanjing and its nearby prefecture-level city Changzhou). Research Question 1: Considering the impact of rapid urbanization on food security, this study examines the basic situation and their influencing factors ...
QES-AS Program: Governing Urban Food Systems in the Global South
The Hungry Cities Partnership has received a four-year (2017-2021) grant from the Canadian Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarships advanced scholars program to fund the exchange of doctoral, post-doctoral and early career scholars between Canada and partner cities. Learn More (PDF)
IPaSS: Informality, Inclusive Growth and Food Security in Cities of the Global South
This foundation project of the Hungry Cities Partnership is funded by the SSHRC and IDRC under the International Partnerships for Sustainable Societies Program (IPaSS). The project has facilitated the formation of an initial seven-city research and policy network across the Global South linked to researchers at five Canadian universities. The project has embarked on a five-year program of collaborative research on a variety of themes related to inclusive growth and the formal and informal urban food system in the study ...
Assessing and Mitigating the Food Security Consequences of COVID-19 in China, Ecuador and South Africa
The proposed research will identify the immediate and longer-term impact of COVID-19 on household food security in cities, and will assess and improve fast-evolving social and policy countermeasures to enhance food security. Our research objectives are to: 1) Investigate the immediate food security challenges resulting from quarantine measures, unstable food supply, and fear of shopping in affected cities; 2) Assess how COVID-19 has impacted food security by longitudinal comparison with the baseline survey data collected through Hungry Cities Project; and ...
Assessing and Mitigating the Food Security Consequences of COVID-19 in Nanjing and Wuhan, China
This project evaluates the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on household food security in Nanjing, China, assess the effectiveness of temporary food security interventions from a multi-stakeholder perspective and develop social and policy measures to mitigate the impacts. The objectives are to: 1) Investigate the immediate food security challenges resulting from China’s quarantine measures, unstable food supply, and fear of food shopping in two COVID-19 affected cities (Wuhan and Nanjing); 2) Compare food security status in Nanjing following the COVID-19 ...
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THESES
Impact of Online Food Purchasing on Urban Household Dietary Quality
— Master's Thesis — The transition and upgrading of grain security to food security, it is the deepening of China's food security policy in the new era, as well as an important area of safeguarding and improving people's livelihood. With the rapid socio-economic development leading to the increasingly diversified food consumption needs of residents, the importance of food consumption structure and dietary quality has gradually deepened. At the same time, under the construction of the digital society, the food e-commerce industry ...
The Impact of Spatial Distribution for “New Retail” Fresh Food Outlets on Urban Household Dietary Diversity
— Master's Thesis — With the support of national policies and the active participation of relevant enterprises, China's new retail industry has grown rapidly and become one of the largest retail markets in the world. The combination of the new retail model and the fresh retail industry has given birth to a new way of purchasing fresh food, which has had an important impact on residents' food consumption behavior and habits. In recent years, the dietary consumption structure of Chinese residents ...
RESEARCH BRIEFS
COVID-19 and Food Security in Urban China: Wuhan and Nanjing Compared
To contain the spread of COVID-19, governments around the world have adopted various regulatory measures, many of which have drastically and often unintentionally interrupted food supply chains and reshaped the food environment in cities (Aday and Aday 2020, Carducci et al 2021, Crush and Si, 2020, Swinnen and McDermott, 2020). The measures taken by the Chinese government were especially interventionist and included locking down a whole city, closing all food outlets, and establishing a state-organized food distribution network (Zhong et ...
COVID-19 and Grassroots Community Organizing in Wuhan, China
As the epicentre of COVID-19 outbreak in China, Wuhan implemented some of the most stringent quarantine measures yet seen globally. Between January 23 and April 8, the city of 11 million people was in lockdown and all those who had not already left its confines for the annual Spring Festival (about 9 million people) were quarantined within the city (Ma and Zhuang 2020). In these circumstances, their need to access food posed a serious challenge. Food insecurity, which in China ...
From Wet Markets to Online Purchase: Food Shopping Patterns During COVID-19 in Wuhan and Nanjing, China
Wet markets have been the backbone of urban food provisioning in Chinese cities for several decades now (Si et al 2016, Zhang and Pan 2013, Zhong et al 2018, Zhong et al 2020). The role of wet markets as the primary source of food in cities may be shifting, however, as the COVID-19 pandemic draws food purchase away from wet markets to online platforms. Online food platforms emerged and grew over the last decade and the pandemic has boosted this ...
Food Security Challenges in Chinese Cities During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Globally, one of the major consequences of public health responses to the spread of COVID-19 is seen as an increase in food insecurity as agriculture and food supply chains are interrupted, food outlets are shuttered, household income to spend on food declines, and people are partially or completely quarantined at home (CFS 2020, Clapp 2020, Crush and Si 2020, WFP 2020). These impacts are being monitored by the Hungry Cities Partnership (HCP) in a series of blogs and a media ...
Mobility Controls and Urban Food Policy Responses to COVID-19 in China
At latest count (June 20, 2020), there were over 9 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide and over 450,000 deaths. While there has been an explosion of biomedical research on the pandemic, detailed empirical research investigating the impact of COVID-19 on food security is scarcer (Crush and Si 2000). This project is therefore examining the impacts on household food security in Chinese cities during the first wave of the pandemic. The main objectives are to: (a) investigate the immediate food ...