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Fares, Tomaz Mefano (2023) 'Food security and power struggle in the Chinese 'battle of the beans'.' Journal of Peasant Studies, 50 (5). pp. 2024-2049.

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Abstract

The mid-2000s foreign headway over China’s soybean downstream complex, known as the battle of the beans, reinforced an uncritical nationalist discourse over food security based on a Sino-foreign dichotomy. This article demonstrates through an empirically rich analysis based on four crucial Chinese SOEs that such a discourse ignores diverging capitalist accumulation strategies as two SOEs (COFCO and Chinatex) took advantage of global soybean price fluctuations to grow in association with foreign agribusiness. Instead, I suggest that food security reflects dynamic state-capital relations in China evidenced by the political reaction of two state-owned competitors (Jiusan and Sinograin), endorsing its nationalist appeal.

Item Type: Journal Article
Keywords: China, food security, battle of the beans, soybean downstream complex, capitalist accumulation strategies, state-capital relations
SOAS Departments & Centres: Departments and Subunits > Department of Development Studies
ISSN: 03066150
DOI (Digital Object Identifier): https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2022.2054701
SWORD Depositor: JISC Publications Router
Date Deposited: 23 May 2022 09:24
URI: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/id/eprint/37290

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