Geographical indication (GI) serves as a vital instrument for rural development, while its practical effectiveness presents obvious disparities. This paper introduces the public policy concept of the implementation gap into research on China’s GI system. This concept denotes the structural disconnection between formal institutional design and practical policy implementation. Drawing on an embedded case study of Jiangjin pepper and taking the European Union as a reference, this paper conducts document analysis with reference to European Union (EU) benchmarks to examine policy delivery in terms of registration, producer organisation, quality control and market performance. It identifies five interacting sub-dimensions that contribute to the implementation gap, including state over-embedding, transplant dissonance, institutional monoculture, institutional layering, and protection overreach. Narrowing this gap requires institutional reforms to separate regulatory functions and incorporate producer knowledge into policy practice.
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Wang, C., Chen, Z, J., Chen, Z., Yu, F., Liu, Y. (2026) Why Do Geographical Indication Policies Underperform? The Implementation Gap in China’s GI Regime: A Case Study of Jiangjin Zanthoxylum bungeanum with Lessons from the EU. Journal of Social Development and History, 2(3), 32-41. https://doi.org/10.71052/jsdh/UNPY6339