5.11. How China Became the 2nd Largest Dairy Nation 🧀 A Lactose Intolerant Society Meets Political Influence

Since 2020 China is the second largest dairy market globally and it’s right on track to exceed the US and become Nr 1. How did milk go from the image of being barbarian to being seen as a valuable necessity for strong, healthy babies? How is the communist party of China using milk as a political tool? And insights into how small cultural changes can have massive repercussions if your culture is freaking 1,4 billion people large. Oh man, get ready for this one.

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(Part of the script)

If you go way back in history the root of this development can be found in the optimum wars in the 19th century. I am quoting Jian Yi, from the China Good Food Fund: “You have to understand the psychology here – there is a sense in China that we have been humiliated ever since the opium wars, but that now we are no longer going to be humiliated by foreign powers.”

China has had an extensive history of severe famines like The Great Chinese Famine 1959, which was highly influenced by agricultural reforms.

Through most of the imperial dynasties until the 20th Century, milk was generally seen as the disgusting food of barbarians.

For most of the 20th Century, milk had a relatively low profile in China. China's economy was closed to the global market, and its production was minimal. Throughout the Mao era, milk was in short supply, rationed to those deemed to have a particular need: infants and the elderly, athletes, and political party staff above a particular grade. Therefore, milk was considered a special treat: When Richard Nixon visited China in the early 70s, he was given White Rabbit candy as a gift, a chewy white caramel made of milk solids.

As China opened up to the market in the 1980s, after Mao’s death, dried milk powder began appearing in small shops where you could buy it with state-issued coupons. Jian Yi’s parents bought milk powder because they thought it would make him stronger. “It was expensive, I didn’t like it, I was intolerant, but we persuaded ourselves it was the food of the future.”

In a little over 30 years, milk has become the symbol of a modern, affluent society and a sign of a country that can feed its people. The average person in China has gone from barely drinking milk to consuming about 30kg of dairy products a year. Though that is still just a bit more than 1/10th of American dairy consumption, it matters if 1,4 billion people do it.

The transition has been driven by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), for which milk is not just food but a critical strategic tool. For a country that was not long ago stricken by famine, the ability to afford animal products, particularly milk has been marketed as a visible symbol of the Party's success. Also, during the one-child policy, the CCP made a social pact with the people: while family size might be limited, the state would make sure that each couple's offspring would be as strong as it could make them. Feeding children milk took on great importance in maintaining that image. The CCP created a market for milk where there had been none before and invested heavily in developing a domestic dairy industry.