China announces salt monopoly reforms

China’s government is chipping away at the country’s millennia-old salt monopoly, scrapping controls on the price and distribution of edible salt as part of the broader overhaul of the state sector. According to The Wall Street Journal, China’s State Council announced Thursday that while the government will continue to license salt producers and require them to add iodine to most salt, the companies will be free to set prices and distribution channels starting next year. Though the reform plan doesn’t do away with the monopoly entirely, it does attempt to give market forces greater sway to bring greater efficiency and lower prices to a system.