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Canteens and the Biopolitics of Food in Industrial China
February 10, 2020 @ 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm
In no country were hunger and malnutrition politicized more than they were in twentieth-century China. Mao Zedong triumphantly declared the founding of a new socialist regime on the 1st of October 1949. At the moment, however, China was facing an existential crisis: food shortages. The Communists had to face the same dilemma that had long haunted their political archenemy. Malnourished population, once a strategic target for political mobilization against their political opponent, could turn into a potential political threat to the new regime’s stability. Furthermore, food calories arguably remained as the prime source of energy in China’s national economy, predominantly agricultural. To build strong socialist economy – industrially mighty and yet egalitarian, the Chinese working population should eat better and more food than it ever had.
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