ABSTRACT
Our objective in this book was to understand China’s ecological agriculture sector in terms of both top-down and bottom-up initiatives. In addition to highlighting some limitations and future research directions, this chapter reviews the broad socio-political landscape in China that is shaping the food policy regime under which the ecological agriculture sector and AFNs are emerging and evolving. We underscore various political economy factors (e.g. state roles, civil society constraints, the land tenure system, and the emergence of the middle and upper-middle classes) that explain the diversity and complexity of development paths of ecological agriculture in recent decades in China.
