China’s Communist Party should realise that when it gags the media to try to make the Chinese government look good, it is doing so at the risk of the life and health of the Chinese people. And when the world finds out, the price China has to pay in terms of its reputation far outweighs whatever short-terms gains it had made.
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China paying the price of news blackout on food safety
By FRANK CHING
17 September 2008
FOUR years ago, tragedy struck China when a company cheated parents by selling baby formula with little or no nutritional value. This led to the deaths of at least 12 infants and the severe malnutrition of hundreds more, with potential long-lasting consequences.
Then, last year, an international scare broke out after it was discovered that pet food imported from China was causing the death of hundreds of dogs and cats in North America because the food had been laced with melamine to give them an appearance of higher nutritional value. Melamine is a chemical used to make plastics; it causes kidney stones in animals.
About the same time, lead-tainted Chinese toys were recalled amid widespread publicity and a call went out that Chinese products were not safe and that ‘Made in China’ is a warning label. China had to take immediate steps to reassure its own population, and the world, that stringent regulations would be put in place. The former head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, was charged with corruption and promptly executed.
Now it has happened again. There is another food scare, with infant milk powder contaminated with melamine having been sold in large parts of China. At least two infants have died and well over 1,000 others spread across eight provinces are suffering from kidney stones.
Though there have been exports, including to Taiwan, the problem appears to be primarily domestic. The State Council has decreed a ‘national food safety emergency’.
The manufacturer of the product, Sanlu Group Co, a state-owned company with a minority New Zealand stake, announced on Sept 11 that it has sealed off 2,176 tonnes of contaminated milk powder and initiated a recall of its products. The question is why it took so long for Sanlu to sound the alarm.
Its New Zealand partner, Fonterra, said that it knew about the problem six weeks earlier and had immediately pressed for a recall, but this did not happen for weeks. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark says that Fonterra tried ‘for weeks to get official recall and the local authorities in China would not do it’. Finally, last Monday, New Zealand ‘blew the whistle in Beijing’ and ‘a very heavy hand then descended on the local authorities’.
Chinese investigators, besides assessing the responsibility of Sanlu and its suppliers, should also determine the culpability of local authorities in China. In fact, problems with Sanlu milk powder go back to March. Over the last half-year, there have been intermittent reports of babies with difficulty urinating, or babies urinating blood.
On June 30, an inquiry from the public about the product was found on the official website of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine. The Gansu provincial health department spokesman said that on July 16, he had received reports of a rare kidney disease among infants. ‘Sixteen babies were hospitalised in the first half of this year,’ he said. ‘All of them had drunk Sanlu milk powder for months.’
The China News Service reported that many parents of sick infants had complained to their local inspection administrations and even sent samples for testing. However, they were told that the powder met national safety standards. In July, a cable TV channel in Hunan province reported that an unusually high number of kidney-stone cases among infants had been found in a children’s hospital.
Given this situation, one must ask, why wasn’t something done earlier? One possible suspect: The Olympic Games. In the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics, China was even more than usually fearful of bad publicity. The Propaganda Department put out a 21-point directive to the nation’s media. The eighth point said: ‘All food safety issues, such as cancer-causing mineral water, are off-limits.’
By putting food-safety issues off limits, the Propaganda Department made it impossible for investigative journalists in Gansu, Hunan and other provinces to dig into the situation and file reports warning the rest of the country about the dangers lying in the harmless-looking milk powder.
Sanlu reportedly discovered the problem with its product on Aug 1, a week before the opening of the Olympic Games. It waited until Sept 11 before issuing the product recall. By then, of course, the Games had ended although the Paralympics were still on.
China’s Communist Party should realise that when it gags the media to try to make the Chinese government look good, it is doing so at the risk of the life and health of the Chinese people. And when the world finds out, the price China has to pay in terms of its reputation far outweighs whatever short-terms gains it had made.
The writer is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator
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