A critique of high-value supply chains as a means of modernising agriculture in China: The case of the beef industry

China has embarked on an agricultural modernisation program with far-reaching implications for rural development, food safety and trade. A major focus of China’s agricultural modernisation program has been to build high-value supply chains and large, modern agro-industrial enterprises. This paper provides a critique of these efforts in the case of the high-value beef supply chain. It finds that interventionist policies to fast-track the development of high-value supply chains have perverse outcomes and that a more incremental and facilitative approach to modernisation should be pursued based around the development of mid-value supply chains.