"What does this have to do with protecting our rights?" The consumer confidence system and the Chinese regulatory state

Recurrent food safety scandals in the Chinese marketplace present a threat to a government that appears unable or unwilling to keep its citizens safe. The party-state has responded to this threat with the development of laws and institutions framed as initiatives for the protection of consumers which task consumers with the responsibility for safe consumption. The message of the Chinese consumer welfare apparatus is that consumers who make the right choices can buy with assurance, a message which emphasizes consumer self-protection while de-emphasizing the role of the government in regulation and law enforcement. The “Consumer Confidence System,” a small initiative spearheaded by a Beijing-based consumer protection organization, is one example of the non-centralized source of such messages. While the ostensibly independent project purports to promote consumer rights by certifying trustworthy businesses and funneling the fees paid by these member businesses into online resources for consumers, it functions to depoliticize issues of consumer safety by framing safe consumption as a matter of vigilant consumers making the right choices. This paper investigates the operation of this organization and explores the dissemination of its messages as part of a mode of regulation by which the state and its agents attempt to manage the contradictions of Chinese capitalism. Its specific contribution lies in a richer understanding of the tensions produced when a strong authoritarian state coexists with a flourishing but poorly regulated market economy. By examining how dispersed efforts by the state at shaping a specific consumer subjectivity have been rejected by Chinese consumers, the case also shows that not all state-led discourses are successful.