How can we break away from a fixation on top-down power dynamics and track the impact of social movements in societies that do not easily fit with Western neoliberal theorisations? Building on Foucault’s insights on governance, this article proposes an analytical lens of the ‘biopolitics of existence’ to address this problem. The term existence refers not simply to the ‘corporeal’ needs of survival (be it of an individual or an organisation) but also to the freedom to (self-)develop and the ability to interact with others. By examining how the Good Food Movement has transformed the bios of ordinary people into agency and reshaped the governing ethos in China’s food system, this article demonstrates that to assess the gravity of social change is to first comprehend how actors calculated their action in a particular socio-political ecology. To speak of the politics of existence is to recognise that existence is simultaneously something to be defended and to be established. A ‘biopolitics of existence’ lens is instrumental in making visible social actors’ logic in (re)forming socio-political norms while keeping in sight the entanglement of different stakeholders.

我们如何摆脱对自上而下的权力动态的束缚，并追踪社会运动在不容易与西方新自由主义理论相适应的社会中的影响？本文基于福柯关于治理的见解，提出了“存在的生物政治”的分析视角来解决这个问题。存在一词不仅指生存的“整体”需求（无论是个人还是组织），还指（自我）发展的自由和与他人互动的能力。通过研究“美食运动”如何改变了生物特征本文证明，评估社会变革的严重性首先是要了解行为者在特定的社会政治生态环境中如何计算其行为。谈论存在的政治就是要认识到存在同时是要捍卫和建立的东西。“存在的生物政治”镜头有助于使可见的社会行为者的逻辑在（重新）形成社会政治规范的同时保持不同利益相关者的纠缠。