As recently as 2013 China’s “salt police”—a 25,000-strong force with its own special gold badge in the shape of salt crystals—was cracking down on private merchants who had been trying to sell salt online. This was ostensibly less about state control or revenues than about public health: China has had a spate of food contamination mishaps, and has been battling iodine deficiency among much of its rural population for years.
