#45 China's Drive for Food Sovereignty: Navigating Opportunities and Risks in Sino-Dutch Agrifood Collaboration

In short:

• China is prioritising food security as a strategic issue.
• Agriculture is shifting toward sustainability and smarter management.
• Demand is growing for knowledge-driven, long-term partnerships.
• Real opportunities exist — but so do geopolitical and policy risks.
• Collaboration works best when solutions are locally adapted.

About the authors:

• Dr. Tan Yujing is a lecturer at the Institute for Area Studies and International Studies. Her research focuses on innovation in China, particularly the role of the state in socio-economic transformation, as well as comparative studies of local governance in China and the EU.
• Dr. Pieter Zwaan is Senior Research Fellow on EU Agricultural Policy at the EU & Global Affairs Unit and Assistant Professor / Senior Lecturer in Public Administration at the Institute for Management Research, Radboud University Nijmegen. His research focuses on multi-level and collaborative governance, as well as the implementation, evaluation, and evidence use in EU policy-making, particularly in agricultural and environmental policy.
• Dr. Didi Qian is the founder and CEO of Demeter42, a Wageningen University & Research spin-off developing AI-based decision support systems for greenhouse horticulture. She holds a PhD from Wageningen University & Research and has experience in international greenhouse projects as former Area Manager China at Delphy. Her work focuses on autonomous cultivation and data-driven, resource-efficient greenhouse systems.
• Dr. Irna Hofman is a Lecturer at Leiden University and a rural development sociologist specialising in social and agrarian change in Central Asia. She conducted extensive fieldwork in the region, obtained her PhD from Leiden University in 2019, and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford (2019–2022). She remains affiliated with Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment.