You know very little about agriculture in China I would guess. Short answer: no you don't. Long answer: we've had chicken, milk, pork, rice scares all in the last few months.

Okay maybe not that backward farming.

Citation? (preferably showing how widespread they are as well).

(While I agree with your point, alarm bells go off when I read lists of 'events' with no references)

Well, I'm living through it. We recently got chicken back in our work cafeteria after a couple of months without. Colleagues are still smuggling in milk powder from Hong Kong and other places abroad for their newborns, I think it's more illicit and expensive than cocaine now, but that might just be hyperbole. Rice is quite recent and the government is conducting nationwide soil tests.

Pork is always problematic since those babies are basically general waste recycling machines, it's hard to figure out what the nongmin are feeding them. Not sure of anything specific though, eventually all these scares start blurring together and I just stop caring too much.

Because agriculture is such a thankless job here, and gov regulation is weak, there is a lot of incentive for nongmin to cheat without much disincentive. And to be honest, the "industrialization farmed" or GMO food that many westerners are worried about....well, those are first world problems that we'd love to worry about instead.

I agree that references are nice. But then if someone is pushing an agenda it's easy for them to cherry pick the URLs they provide. So even if someone does provide references it's probably a good idea to use a search engine to check.

Milk 2008: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Chinese_milk_scandal) (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7614083.stm)

Milk 2010: (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126255525849313997.html)

Milk 2013: (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22088977)

Glow in dark pork: (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/8544851...)

Waste oil from gutters outside restaurants repackaged and sold for consumption: (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/7971983...)

None of those are "from the last few months". And all of them are (pro) western media (less reliable).

In addition, it's seems non of them relate to China's intentional avoidance of modern technology in farming...

Here's an article about contaminated rice: http://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/cadmium-rice-...

Indeed, having so little economic productivity as to have a peasant class would give one someone to feel superior to, as an educated person. Their hovels are also wonderfully picturesque if one doesn't see that the building one thought derelict is actually inhabited by three families.