Kuan-Chi Wang

The proliferation of food trade is restructuring agriculture in East Asia. This research uses edamame trade as a test case to compare China and Taiwan, the two main producers of edamame for the lucrative Japanese market. In the context of growing demand, and with China playing a larger role in food exports with ostensibly lower production costs, how is it that China has lost market share to Taiwan? Answering this question will contribute to our understanding of the growing importance of China in global trade, and how Taiwan and China are actively remaking the East Asia food capitalism that Japan dominated for a century.