SHANGHAI — Under the arches of the Zhongshan Park elevated railway station, there’s a joint where I’ve been catching quick lunches for years. I first went in, nearly a dozen years ago, because the sign over the door caught my attention: Zhen Gong Fu (“Real Kung Fu”), next to a cartoon picture of Hong Kong martial arts legend Bruce Lee in full flight, about to deal a lethal blow.

It was modern Chinese kitsch, something novel for Shanghai at a time when most lunch places here were undecorated mom-and-pop eateries, and I remember thinking: The owner must be a genius. Surely, Real Kung Fu with its cheap chicken-and-rice staples and globalized gloss would soon be everywhere, the answer to the question I often heard from businesspeople, tourists and students in China: Where is the Middle Kingdom’s answer to McDonald’s?

There’s certainly a market for it. China already wolfs down more than $160 billion in Westernized fast food from McDonald’s, KFC and others each year, according to Mintel, the market research firm where I work. Back in 1987, KFC opened its first branch in China; it now has more than 4,000 locations here. McDonald’s came along a few years later, in 1990; it’s currently pushing 2,000 franchises. And relative newcomers like Subway and Burger King are planning hundreds of new outlets across the country. But my good friends at Real Kung Fu have managed, after nearly 15 years, to open just 480 stores. McDonald’s it’s not.

But why? It’s an acknowledged fact of the globalization era that pretty much everyone likes Chinese food: From Accra to Zagreb, it’s not hard to find a decent Cantonese or Sichuanese restaurant. So why do the Chinese, so adept at replicating and re-engineering everything from Caterpillar bulldozers to iPads, find it so stubbornly difficult to replicate a McDonald’s for local food?

There are any number of theories. My favorite is simply this: China may have only one time zone, but it has no national cuisine. That’s not to say you can’t find great food just about everywhere, just that there’s no one thing that Chinese crave everywhere — think of this as the cheeseburger-with-fries problem.

It seems so paradoxical: Food in China is nothing if not quick, cheap and filling, the foundation on which fast food is built. But it is also very much local. I have yet to go to a Chinese city that doesn’t have a superb delicacy to call its own: Gorgeous Shanghai soup dumplings (xiaolongbao) impregnated with pork gravy cost just pennies; crispy fried stinky tofu (chou doufu) in Changsha is equally cheap; and then there’s Beijing’s salty jianbing pancakes stuffed with fresh chives and also available for almost nothing, just like Sichuan’s spicy hot pot, Guangdong’s delicate dim sum, and Yunnan’s sumptuous “crossing the bridge” noodles (guoqiao mixian). It’s all delicious and inexpensive. It’s just not the recipe for a national fast food.

The second reason is bad governance. For all the Communist Party’s prowess in standardizing education, military service and urban planning, it is remarkably inept at — or indifferent to — food. Poorly enforced food-safety standards and erratic business-licensing codes mean setting up a roadside stall is an easy, cheap entrepreneurial activity. Street vendors, fresh markets and entire streets of small family businesses dedicated to a particular dish, say, beef jerky or cold tofu, all still militate against standardization. Yes, things are changing: Hypermarkets and convenience stores are popping up everywhere, and China now has thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of food-processing companies turning out ready meals, prepackaged foods, and canned beverages — but specialization and regionalism still rule.