The Role of Standardisation Initiatives in Local Industrial Development: The Chinese Ginseng Experience

ABSTRACT

China's emergence in international standardisation has led scholars to debates over its intensifying techno-nationalism. This paper examines ginseng standardization using interviews and archives. Standardisation on the ginseng production started in low-income regions, which later changed into the techno-nationalism agenda over the product origin. Upon international standardisation, the sales volume and unit price in ginseng production increased. Yet the effects occurred in the domestic market and the market leader countries moved to the premium segment by product differentiation. The ginseng standard initiative did not achieve the commercial dominance in the global market but was a local development policy tool.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• standardisation
• S&T policies
• economic development
• agricultural technology
• local government

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In China, standards are categorized as national, regional, and industrial standards. Among them, national standards require compliance. In this light, national standards are the same as regulations.

2 Interviews with officers in Jilin Province, December 2015.

3 JZPI was founded in Jilin in 1998 and has been engaged in total quality manufacturing R&D, production, selling and raw material planting. The company became public at the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2007. The company has focused on patenting Chinese medicine, ginseng and gene sequencing. In 2011, JZPI participated in the development of international standard about Panax ginseng.

4 Interviews with officers in Jilin Province.

5 At this time, quality control was still the central focus of standardization, requiring 50 percent of the cultivated ginseng to meet the guidelines of good agricultural practices (GAP).

6 Ginseng for food use is cultivated less than five years.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Yonsei University Research Grant of 2020 (#2020-22-0324) and by the Institute of Convergence Science (ICONS), Yonsei University.