Chinese Public’s Risk Perceptions of Genetically Modified Food: From the 1990s to 2015

This article investigates the Chinese public’s risk perceptions of genetically modified (GM) food from the 1990s to 2015. We adopt socio-psychological and cultural approaches to investigate factors underlying the change of the Chinese public’s perceptions of the risk of GM food in this period. The analysis involves surveys of ‘Chinese publics and biotechnology’, Chinese newspaper coverage of GM food and website and social media sources. Our main finding is that the Chinese public’s risk perceptions of GM food have gone through three different phases: from ‘ignorant of the risk’ in the 1990s, to ‘tolerant of the risk’ between 2000 and 2009, to ‘mindful of the risk’ from 2010 to 2015. Among a variety of factors, social, economic and political transformations in China occurring over the same three decades as our investigation are major factors underlying the change of Chinese public’s risk perception of GM food. Furthermore, with the prominence of risk perception in recent years, as of yet there are no effective mechanisms for coping with the problems of risk communication and management that we have detected; this lack may impede the future development of GM food. We suggest that more studies are necessary to further investigate risk communication and risk governance issues, thereby contributing to better decision making with regard to GM food and risk governance of science and technology.