China appoints potato scientist to helm its elevated antitrust bureau

China has named female agricultural scientist Gan Lin as the new chief of its antitrust bureau within the market regulation agency, as the expanding government body takes on an increasingly elevated role in Beijing’s push to keep Big Tech in check.

The appointment of Gan, 59, was announced on Monday by the State Council, China’s cabinet. The move signifies that the antitrust bureau, renamed the State Anti-monopoly Bureau, now reports directly to the country’s top leadership.

The antitrust bureau was previously headed by Wu Zhenguo, a veteran legal expert at the Ministry of Commerce, which handed over its antitrust function to the newly created State Administration of Market Regulation (SAMR) during a government reshuffle in March 2018. Since then, Gan, who spent 1997 to 1999 doing postdoctoral research on potatoes at Canada’s Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food, has been a deputy director at SAMR.

According to her official biography, Gan is a vice-chairwoman at China Zhi Gong Party, one of the country’s eight non-Communist “democratic” political parties. Gan had been a university professor in agricultural studies before joining the government in 2001. She had also conducted research at the University of Nottingham in the UK.

Gan told Shanghai Securities News last week that the SAMR’s focus is to prevent the “disorderly expansion of capital” in China and “strengthen regulations on the digital economy, technological innovation and information security, and to safeguard the general well-being of the public”.

Gan’s appointment comes at a time when the anti-monopoly bureau is quickly emerging as one of the most formidable watchdogs among dozens of departments within the State Administration of Market Regulation, tasked with overseeing business and market practices of tech giants such as South China Morning Post owner Alibaba Group Holding and on-demand service provider Meituan.