Expert Perspectives
From Local Governance to System Resilience: Urban Civilization Insights from the Fairness Assessment of Food Safety Governance in Jilin
This paper goes beyond the single scope of food safety regulation, revealing structural contradictions in the evolution of urban civilization through the governance of food safety in Jilin Province: the urban-rural gap, the inequitable allocation of governance resources, and the decisive role of social capital in institutional fairness, providing profound theoretical and policy references for the fairness reconstruction of global urban governance.
Core argument
Quantitative assessments of the fairness of food safety governance in China's Jilin Province indicate that despite an overall good performance, significant urban-rural and regional gradients exist. The study points out that structural fairness and procedural fairness are key to outcome fairness, and the current system exhibits a structural imbalance of "strong government, weak society, weak enterprises." This is not just a local challenge but a profound issue of how global urban civilization can balance efficiency and fairness through institutional design when facing the expansion of complex supply chains and regional differentiation.
In the context of rapid globalization and regional economic reshaping, the foundation upon which cities maintain social stability and resident well-being—public health governance—is facing unprecedented structural challenges. Taking Jilin Province in China as an example, as an important agricultural and food processing base, its food safety governance practices reflect a profound paradox that urban civilization must confront when dealing with the expansion of complex systems: how to ensure fairness and inclusivity in governance outcomes while pursuing regulatory efficiency.
This study does not simply measure a technical indicator; rather, it explores the intrinsic logic of urban governance and the evolutionary path of civilization within a grand systemic framework. By integrating the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation (FCE) models, we examine the landscape of Jilin's food safety governance from the perspective of "structure-process-outcome."
The analysis results clearly delineate the multidimensional issues of fairness in current urban governance: first, the spatial divide. There are significant gradient differences in the allocation of governance resources between urban and rural areas, including disparities in regulatory density and detection coverage, which directly lead to unequal experiences in safety assurance across different regions. This is not merely a problem of resource allocation but a manifestation of the solidification of urban spatial structure and regional development imbalance at the institutional level.
Secondly, there is an imbalance in power structures. The study finds that although the government's regulatory capacity scores high, the implementation of corporate responsibilities and the depth of third-party participation remain insufficient. This points to a classic governance model of "strong government, weak society, and weak enterprises," where the coordination mechanism between top-level institutional design, grassroots execution, and social participation has not yet been effectively built. In the context of urban civilization, this indicates that the effectiveness of institutions in highly complex supply chains depends not only on policy formulation but also on the effective penetration of social trust and participation mechanisms.
The most crucial insight is that outcome equity is not determined by a single measure of regulatory intensity but by the joint determination of "structural fairness" and "process fairness." Groups with higher socioeconomic capital are more likely to benefit from the existing governance system. This reveals a long-term trend: in the process of urbanization and uneven economic development, the existing governance framework largely internalizes existing social class advantages, causing the distribution of institutional benefits to exhibit a significant structural tilt.
From the perspective of global urban strategy, the Jilin case goes beyond food safety itself; it is a microcosm of "urban civilization resilience." A healthy, equitable urban civilization is not marked merely by low pollution or high regulation, but by its ability to effectively absorb and mediate the immense friction brought by spatial, economic, and demographic structures, ensuring that governance feedback mechanisms truly reach all social strata. This demands that we re-examine the paradigm of urban governance, shifting from mere "risk control" to "inclusive institutional design," embedding social equity into every link of infrastructure layout, policy formulation, and community participation.
Future urban strategies must incorporate this systematic assessment of "fairness" as a core indicator.Future urban strategies must incorporate a systematic assessment of "fairness" as a core indicator. This means that cities should no longer be merely efficient production machines, but rather dynamic, inherently resilient socio-ecological systems. To achieve this goal, we need to elevate the thinking from micro-level governance details to macro-level strategic considerations regarding urban power structures, capital flows, and regional trends under globalization, ultimately building a new paradigm for urban governance that can manage complex systems while achieving social win-win outcomes.
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