Earthquakes, Cyclones, Superstition….and Political Change

Today, NPR’s Morning Edition had a very interesting conversation with reporter Frank Langfitt, who spent more than five years in China as a correspondent for the Baltimore Sun.

The subject: the politics of natural disaster in China.

Besides discussing how politics are influencing the response scene, about three and a half minutes into the conversation, Langfitt talked about natural disasters in Chinese political culture.

He explained that in this view, major natural disasters such as floods, famines and earthquakes can signal the end of what’s known as the Mandate of Heaven.

Similar to the Divine Right of Kings, under this concept, the heavens bestow powers to earthly leaders. Should the celestial forces be displeased with the way those leaders are wielding power, they will take those powers away – and can signal this change with a great natural disaster.

Journalist John Pomfret of the Washington Post takes this further in his blog, Pomfret’s China:

“On July 28, 1976 at 3:42 A.M., an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 on the Richter scale shook Tangshan, a coal mining town to the east of Beijing. Sixteen hours later another 7.8 trembler rocked Tangshan again. Chinese official sources say 242,000 died, making the Great Tangshan Quake the deadliest earthquake of the 20th century and the third deadliest of all time.

“To the Chinese, however, the Tangshan Quake didn't just spell disaster, it augured change. Six weeks later (on Sept. 2), Chairman Mao died, ending the Cultural Revolution and sparking a battle to change China won ultimately by Deng Xiaoping. Two other major Communist figures had already "gone to meet Marx" that year.

“Natural disasters in China mean more than they do in the West. Many Chinese hold a view that the government is responsible for maintaining the harmony under heaven. If the earth buckles and shakes, it's a harbinger of political or social upheaval.

“China's Communist government spent decades trying to stamp out superstitions and feudal beliefs such as these, but it has failed. The last two decades of economic reform have sparked an explosion of traditional beliefs and a renewed interest in Chinese Buddhist-like sects.”

Today’s Chinese leaders may publicly eschew superstition, but I suspect that Frank Langfitt was rught when he said they this quake has probably rattled them internally, making them ask what it all means under the Mandate of Heaven. (How does I Ching, the Book of Changes, relate to the Mandate of Heaven? Read about it here)

Whether by Mandate of Heaven, Divine Right of Kings or common sense,here’s one florid example of not using power responsibly: we turn our attention to the military government of Myanmar, formerly (and preferably, to many) known as Burma.

Reports from that secretive military state in the wake of Cyclone Nargis have been alternately chilling, repulsive and infuriating. The international community continues to plead with the ruling junta for access to deliver aid to the hundreds of thousands of survivors in dire straits, but are met with one ridiculous rule after another: visas denied to aid workers, demands that all relief supplies be distributed only by the government. Many say that the government is hoarding these relief supplies for itself, while it distributes rotten food to the cyclone survivors. (More from the BBC, World wrestles with Burma aid issue.)

Newsweek’s Melinda Liu notes the Myanmar government is missing in action.

“The 400,000-strong military kept an unusually low profile last week, suggesting serious dysfunction at the top. Sr. Gen. Tan Shwe, the nation's leader, was nowhere to be seen. Buddhist monks and nuns appeared to be spearheading community clean-up campaigns—although state censors instructed the media to report only on military relief efforts. But some troops seemed more concerned with social control than social welfare. Instead of helping emergency services, for example, some soldiers conducted surveillance of local NGO staffers who were offering free funeral services to the bereaved families, according to Aung Zaw, a Burmese exile and editor of The Irrawaddy, a Thai-based magazine about Burma.

"Burmese dissidents who planned to sabotage the [constitutional] election (scheduled for May 10th)," he says,"feel the cyclone has done their work for them" by driving ordinary Burmese into the arms of the opposition. Many citizens in this superstitious country seem to believe that the storm represented nothing less than divine retribution—cosmic payback for the violent sacrilege committed by the junta last September, when the military put a bloody end to the "Saffron Revolution." Crowds of monks had taken to the streets with an estimated 100,000 civilians to protest the country's deepening economic hardships, including an abrupt fuel-price hike. The regime responded with fury, beating and imprisoning clerics and laypeople alike and killing as many as 138. Now many Burmese see the monster cyclone as proof that Than Shwe and his junta have lost the "mandate of heaven"—the supernatural right to govern.”

Liu looks to other countries to see what natural disasters can do to regimes.

Mexico City, 1985: “After a massive earthquake hit, the authorities and the country's aloof president, Miguel de la Madrid, went AWOL for days, leaving citizens to organize rescue efforts themselves. When the president finally did appear, he initially announced that Mexico "didn't need outside help." With more than 10,000 estimated dead, survivors had quickly taken to the streets to denounce the government's weak response. These protests energized a new crop of community activists and opposition leaders, lighting a spark that eventually brought down Mexico's long-dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) years later.

Tangshan, China, 1976: “By the time that quake hit, killing up to 600,000, the Cultural Revolution was nearing its end, Mao was ailing and moderate leaders were already plotting to oust his most zealous accomplices. When the government then proceeded to badly fumble relief efforts— refusing international aid, among other things—it strengthened the hand of reformers who wanted to end China's isolation. Three months later, Mao was dead, the extremist "Gang of Four" was behind bars and the reins of power were passing to Deng Xiaoping—now famous for his unabashed embrace of capitalism.”

“In each of these cases, the chain of events leading to political change was long and complicated, but the governments' incompetence in the face of great tragedy helped tip the scales.”

"One shouldn't count out Burma's leaders yet. The military has managed to cling to power for 46 years now, despite losing an election in 1990 to the party of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi who's been under house arrest nearly ever since.

And the regime has a ready reply to deny it has now lost its heavenly mandate. In 2005, heeding astrologers' advice, the officers moved the country's capital from Rangoon to Naypyidaw, a hardscrabble town some 250 miles north. This location helped the new capital escape the worst of Nargis's wrath—though of course it's unclear whether this was a sign of blessing or just dumb luck. Still, the generals must know that surviving a cyclone is one thing. Avoiding the human earthquake it provokes is a whole other matter.

Read Melinda Liu’s article Winds of Change

Harry Potter Titles to Surprise JK Rowling

A few weeks ago I wrote about Chinese counterfeiters having a field day with Harry Potter, not just pirating copies of JK Rowling's books, but even writing their own stories of the boy wizard's adventures.

ADDITIONAL HP titles in China, include these:

• Harry Potter and the Leopard-Walk- Up-to-Dragon


• Harry Potter and the Chinese Porcelain Doll


• Harry Potter and the Waterproof Pearl


• Harry Potter and the Half-Blooded Relative Prince


• Harry Potter and the Big Funnel


• Harry Potter and Platform Nine and Three-Quarters


• Harry Potter and the Chinese Overseas Students at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

The plots are hilarious. This is the gist of Harry Potter and the Chinese Porcelain Doll:

Harry Potter learns that Mysterious Man (Voldemort) is going to China to persuade his rival Yandomort to attack Harry as well as the Western magic world. Harry decides to find Chinese Porcelain Doll, who could beat Yandomort in China. On a passenger steamer, Harry makes friends with Long Long and Xing Xing, who are part of a Chinese circus. It turns out that Naughty Bubble, the boy who usually bullied Xing Xing at the circus, was Yandomort. After Voldemort killed Naughty Bubble’s mother, Big Spinach, he took Naughty Bubble as his disciple, and taught him black magic to make him become Yandomort.

in Harry Potter and the Leopard-Walk- Up-to-Dragon, Harry becomes a fat, hairy dwarf after being caught in a “sour and sweet rain”; he loses all his magic and can get it back only by obtaining the magic ring. After he does, Harry becomes a dragon that fights evil. Voldemort has an even more powerful brother who makes trouble for Harry.

Excerpt:

"Harry doesn’t know how long it will take to wash the sticky cake off his face. For a civilized young man, it is disgusting to have dirt on any part of his body. He lies in the elegant bathtub, keeps wiping his face, and thinks about Dudley’s face, which is as fat as Aunt Petunia’s bottom."

Any ideas for more Harry Potter stories? Submit a title and synopsis in the comments!

This could be a lot of fun.

As for the titles above, read all the plot summaries and some excerpts in this New York Times op-ed article, Memo to the Dept. of Magical Copyright Enforcement.

[Disclosure: I'm not a HP fan, not in the least. Tried my best to read the books but failed, and slept through the movies (had to take the kids!). Many have told me I'm missing out on a great story. For now, I'll just have to suffer this terrible, self-inflicted deprivation.]

China's Counterfeiters Take on Harry Potter

In China, copyright pirates are racing to get out their version of the latest Harry Potter film before the real one makes it to theatres; and fake books are in the works too with no resemblance of the real thing.

NPR's Louisa Lim reports fake Harry Potter movies and books become a cottage industry in China, and sales of the knockoffs could be higher than the real thing! (Ouch. JK Rowling must be steamed.)

Here are links to my previous posts on counterfeiting in China:

More Counterfeiting Tales from China

Tip Your (Knockoff) Hat to Imitations and Counterfeits!

Counterfeit Blood Protein Revealed in China

And more!

China insists its exports are safe

Audra Ang of the Associated Press reports today:

BEIJING - China insisted Thursday that its exports are safe, issuing a rare direct commentary as international fears over Chinese products spread.

Wang Xinpei, a spokesman for the Commerce Ministry, said China "has paid great attention" to the issue, especially food products because it concerns people's health.

"It can be said that the quality of China's exports all are guaranteed," Wang told reporters at a regularly scheduled briefing.

The statement was among Beijing's most public assertions of the safety of its exports since they came under scrutiny earlier this year with the deaths of dog and cats in North America blamed on Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine.

The full article can be read at the Boston Globe.

Even As China Cracks Down on Food Safety, Recall is Issued for Chinese-Made Tires

From the New York Times:

By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI, June 27 — After weeks of insisting that food here is largely safe, regulators in China said Tuesday that they had recently closed 180 food plants and that inspectors had uncovered more than 23,000 food safety violations.

The nationwide crackdown, which began in December, also found that many small food makers were using industrial chemicals, dyes and other illegal ingredients in making a range of food products, everything from candy to seafood.

(T)he government has moved aggressively in recent months to enforce the nation’s food safety regulations and to crack down on fake and counterfeit foods.

But Tuesday’s announcement, which appeared on the web site of the country’s top quality watchdog, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, has added fuel to concerns about rampant fraud in the food industry here.

Regulators said 33,000 law enforcement officials combed the nation and turned up illegal food making dens, counterfeit bottled water, fake soy sauce, banned food additives and illegal meat processing plants.

“These are not isolated cases,” Han Yi, director of the administration’s quality control and inspection department told the state-run media.

China Daily, the nation’s English language newspaper, said industrial chemicals, including dyes, mineral oils, paraffin wax, formaldehyde and malachite green, had been found in everything from candy, pickles and biscuits to seafood.

Regulators said they also learned that sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid were being used to process shark fin and ox tendon.

These industrial chemicals are often toxic or corrosive and can be used in everything from drain cleaners, detergent and fertilizer to surfboard wax.

These types of findings have become all too common in China. For instance, in 2005, officials in south China found a company repackaging food waste and shipping it to 10 other regions. And just last week, officials said a company in Anhui province, not far from Shanghai, was selling a two-year-old rice dumpling mix as fresh, according to the state-controlled media.

Experts here say the problem is that the country’s food regulations are not being enforced and small businessmen feel they need to go to extraordinary lengths to make a profit.

Read the entire article on the New York Times.

In other news of substandard products: a New Jersey company announced a recall of hearly half a million tires made in China. But Foreign Tire Sales says it can't afford to pay for the recall and tire replacements, so it's asking the federal government for help.

The defective tires, used on light trucks and SUV’s, have been sold under the names of Westlake, Telluride, Compass and YKS. The problem: tire separation.

Lawyers say these tires are responsible for at least one fatal accident last year .

(Listen to Adam Davison's report broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition today.)

This tire recall follows several other recalls of Chinese-made products recently, including toothpaste containing a poisonous chemical, contaminated pet food, and Thomas the Train Engine toys decorated with lead paint.

The New York Times's David Barboza also wrote about the defective tires, and reports:

"They were supposed to include a gum strip between the steel bands that prevented them from separating. Mr. Lavigne said the gum strip cost less than a dollar a tire to install.

"But in October 2005, officials at Foreign Tire Sales became suspicious that the tires were made without the strips.

"Nearly a year later, in September 2006, Hangzhou Zhongce [the Chinese manufacturer]officials acknowledged that they had “unilaterally” decided to omit the gum strip, according to a report by Foreign Tire Sales for federal regulators."

You can read the whole article here.

RELATED: John Frisbie, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, says Chinese companies are not adhering to international safety standards. Frisbie talked about whether recent bad news has changed American business interests in China on NPR's Morning Edition today.

Listen to the interview here .

Death Sentence for China's Head of Food and Drug Safety

The BBC reports on a drastic solution to China's serious problem with food and drug safety, with the ultimate penalty for the director of their version of the FDA.

"Zheng Xiaoyu used to be one of the most trusted men in China. He was in charge of making sure his country's food and drugs did not kill anyone.

"But, on Tuesday morning in Beijing, a court found that he had failed - badly. He was found guilty of accepting bribes and of lowering safety standards.

"For his failure, he will be shot dead."

Zheng was in charge of the food and drug administration from its creation in 1998 to the time he was fired in 2005. But it was in 2002 that he saw his power rise dramatically: that's when the the government required all drugs be approved by the agency. With the new ribbon of red tape, the approval of new drugs and food products became very slow. Some manufacturers decided to expedite the process with bribes for officials, including Zheng.

The Associated Press reports (read it on MSNBC China’s Health Ministry found almost 34,000 food-related illnesses in 2005. "According to The Outlook Weekly, a magazine published by the Chinese government’s news agency, a survey by the quality inspection administration found that a third of China’s 450,000 food production companies had no licenses. Also, 60 percent of the total did not conduct safety tests or have the capability to do so."

Zheng was sentenced on May 29, 2007.

The BBC article goes on to say:

"China has promised to get rid of its supply of fake and contaminated drugs. It carries out periodic raids, and calls in cameras to take pictures of its hauls. But the outside world is sceptical. This year alone, there have been reports of contaminated Chinese drugs ending up in Panama, the Dominican Republic, and the United States.

"The Chinese Communist Party now realises it has a huge problem - fake drugs made in [their] country kill people."

But will the execution of Zheng Xiaoyu be enough to scare counterfeiters away from huge profits?

More Counterfeiting Tales from China

Y'all know those fake Prada and Fendi goods are from China, right? Those Louis Vuitton and Gucci bags and purses, those Rolexes sold off street tables in many big cities - all from the Middle Kingdom, no?

Counterfeiting is big business there. But designer goods are just the tip of the iceberg. Think pirated DVDs and CD - all the way up to laptops and cellphones.

In these cases, manufacturers and those who hold the patents are the main losers. But Chinese counterfeiting has expanded into areas that cause harm, and even death. Fake brake pads that fail in an emergency. Fake formula with barely any protein - babies fed this stuff were seriously malnourished, and some died. (See this earlier post) Cheap diethylene glycol sold under the guise of glycerin syrup for use in cough syrup, fever medication, injectable drugs - these caused permanent damage to some people and killed others. (Read this earlier post).

At the heart of this massive problem is this question: why are these fraudulent practices so widespread in China, and why aren't their authorities getting it under control?

The New York Times tackles that issue in the article, When Fakery Turns Fatal.

According to the story, "cutting corners or producing fake goods is not just a legacy of China’s initial rush toward the free market three decades ago but still woven into the fabric of the nation’s thriving industrial economy. It is driven by entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of a weak legal system, lax regulations and a business culture where bribery and corruption are rampant."

After living in deprivation under decades of Communism, are some Chinese willing to go to any lengths to turn a bigger profit? Seems that way, doesn't it?

"For decades," writes David Barboza, "small entrepreneurs have started out counterfeiting in emerging industries in China, seeking an early advantage and their first pot of gold.

"Often, they try to get around regulations, or simply believe small-time cheating that involves adding cheap substitutes or low-grade ingredients will not cause much harm.

Barboza notes:

"Dozens of Chinese cities have risen to prominence over the last two decades by first specializing in fake goods, like Wenzhou, which was once known for selling counterfeit Procter & Gamble products, and Kaihua in Zhejiang province, which specialized in fake Philips light bulbs."

One of those counterfeiting capitals is Wudi, home of the company that sold melamine-contaminated wheat gluten to American pet food manufacturers. Some pets fed with those products were sickened, and some died.

Did the buyers of the contaminated wheat gluten and other products visit the manufacturing plant to observe production practices and note their standards? No - and if they had tried, they might have found ramshackle outbuildings or shuttered facilities instead of the modern factories pictured on these companies' websites.

As Barboza says, corruption - at many levels of Chinese government - only serves to make the deception easier.

The wheat gluten company, Binzhou Futian, "shared a building with the county government’s cereal and grains bureau, an indication of its close ties to the government. "Futian didn’t have any actual factory here,” said a guard who works at the Binzhou headquarters. “They hung a banner here because they wanted to look good in front of visitors. They had countless suppliers from the countryside.”

Wow.

Just how far can this fraud go?

"Last year....pirates were caught faking an entire company, setting up a “branch” of the NEC Corporation of Japan, including 18 factories and warehouses in China and Taiwan."

It's a scary thought. These guys could easily fake a "Made in the USA" label if they wish, if they haven't done it already.

Here again, is the NY Times story.

NPR's Louisa Lim reported last year that Chinese authorities tried to crack down on counterfeiter, but that failed to stem the tide of knockoffs.

Read my post, Is ANYTHING from China Safe These Days? (And how do we know what's from China, anyway?)

Want to flaunt a purse with a Coach logo at a fraction of the price? Here's a story on the hidden costs of buying counterfeit goods.

Is ANYTHING from China Safe These Days? (And how do we know what's from China, anyway?)

I've written some posts about the dangers of Chinese food products lately, being appalled by the callousness of some producers willing to compromise safety and even endanger lives, just to make a fast buck.

But how can consumers tell if a product comes from China or not?

A couple of days ago, my friend Jackie told me in an e-mail message that she'd bought a fruit snack mix from Costco, but didn't realize until closer scrutiny of the label that some of the components came from China, mixed in with ingredients from other countries.

A package of frozen wild mahi-mahi in my freezer shows the country of origin as China. But is that China as in Taiwan (Republic of China) - or is it the People's Republic of China, where all these horror stories originate?

Those are just two examples of how labeling is vague, and inadequate. Food producers in other countries including the U.S often purchase Chinese products to manufacture their goods - wheat gluten in pet food, as an example.

NPR explored this topic in-depth on Morning Edition today. Read or listen to Richard Knox's report: As Imports Increase, a Tense Dependence on China. It's a comprehensive page with lots of features: You can see some of the products China has cornered the market on it from
antibiotics to vitamins. And former FDA official William Hubbard explains why melamine got through the FDA's food safety inspection system, and whether consumers should worry about imports.

Here are links to my earlier blog entries on the subject:

Food Safety: So Much More Than E. coli

Another Tale of Food Safety Challenges in China

Deadly Industrial Chemicals from China Landing Up Cough Syrup and Other Products

Trail to Chinese Food Producers Turns Cold

Trail to Chinese Food Producers Turns Cold

American inspectors who arrived in China last week to investigate the two companies that exported tainted pet food ingredients found that the suspect facilities had been hastily closed down and cleaned up, federal officials said yesterday.

"There is nothing to be found. They are essentially shut down and not operating," said Walter Batts, deputy director of the Food and Drug Administration's office of international programs.

The Washington Post article by Rick Weiss is here.

More ways industrial chemicals are landing up where they can kill.

In China at least 18 people, most of them in Guangdong Province, died in a month last year after they ingested contaminated medicine.

So reports the New York Times in the May 6 article, From China to Panama, a Trail of Poisoned Medicine .

Walt Bogdanich and Jake Hooker write:

"The kidneys fail first. Then the central nervous system begins to misfire. Paralysis spreads, making breathing difficult, then often impossible without assistance. In the end, most victims die.

"Many of them are children, poisoned at the hands of their unsuspecting parents.

"The syrupy poison, diethylene glycol, is an indispensable part of the modern world, an industrial solvent and prime ingredient in some antifreeze.

"It is also a killer. And the deaths, if not intentional, are often no accident.

"Over the years, the poison has been loaded into all varieties of medicine — cough syrup, fever medication, injectable drugs — a result of counterfeiters who profit by substituting the sweet-tasting solvent for a safe, more expensive syrup, usually glycerin, commonly used in drugs, food, toothpaste and other products.

"Toxic syrup has figured in at least eight mass poisonings around the world in the past two decades. Researchers estimate that thousands have died. In many cases, the precise origin of the poison has never been determined. But records and interviews show that in three of the last four cases it was made in China, a major source of counterfeit drugs."

This is a picture of Ernesto Osorio of Panama. Poison cough syrup from China hospitalized him Panama last year and partly paralyzed his face. The story continues,

"Panama is the most recent victim. Last year, government officials there unwittingly mixed diethylene glycol into 260,000 bottles of cold medicine — with devastating results. Families have reported 365 deaths from the poison, 100 of which have been confirmed so far. With the onset of the rainy season, investigators are racing to exhume as many potential victims as possible before bodies decompose even more.

"Panama’s death toll leads directly to Chinese companies that made and exported the poison as 99.5 percent pure glycerin."

A pediatrician told the reporters the problem is vastly underreported.

"Beyond Panama and China, toxic syrup has caused mass poisonings in Haiti, Bangladesh, Argentina, Nigeria and twice in India."

And here's the most disheartening part of this unnecessary tragedy:

"In China, the government is vowing to clean up its pharmaceutical industry...but when Chinese officials investigated the role of Chinese companies in the Panama deaths, they found that no laws had been broken."

For the rest of the article, click here.

Another Tale of Food Safety Challenges in China

Lots of people are thinking about China's food production practices these days after the melamine and wheat gluten stories made headlines. (See my earlier post on this subject.)

Today's Los Angeles Times has a story on honey production there.

FUFENG, CHINA — For two years, Sun Baoli has been trying to clean up the dirty honey business here. He's been met with nasty stings from bees, but those are nothing compared with the curses and punches from their keepers.

The 52-year-old entrepreneur paid the local government about $5,000 to rent part of a nature preserve teeming with nectar-filled acacia trees. He's been recruiting beekeepers to harvest on the grounds, and all he asks is that they follow a few simple health rules. First, no using antibiotics in their colonies; the drugs can make people sick. Second, no storing honey in metal containers; those can taint the sweet goo with toxic iron and lead.

Some 45 keepers have signed up. But many others are hostile to his efforts, which they see as a threat to their decades-old way of doing business on the cheap and making easy profits.

On Saturday night, as the first acacia flowers were starting to bloom, a gang of 15 local beekeepers ambushed Sun as he got out of his red Isuzu truck, beating him and leaving him with a mild concussion.

"It's going to take some time," he said with obvious understatement.

Honey and thousands of other Chinese food products are showing up more and more on dining tables around the world. Last year, China said it exported $3.8 billion worth of food to the U.S., including vast quantities of apple juice, garlic, sausage casings, canned mushrooms and honey.

In any given month, though, U.S. customs inspectors block dozens of Chinese food shipments, including produce contaminated with banned additives and pesticides as well as seafood tainted with drugs. In the wake of the recall of pet foods that U.S. regulators say contained tainted Chinese ingredients, China's food-safety standards have become dinner table conversation across the United States.

To read the whole article, follow this link to the LA Times article.

Food Safety: So Much More Than E. Coli

This is a picture of scrap melamine, a coal by-product used in the manufacture of plastic. In China, some feed manufacturers have been using it for years to boost the protein content of their products, commanding a higher price, reported the New York Times.

Melamine has a chemical content similar to protein, and cannot be easily distinguished when testing for protein content. However, melamine doesn't provide any nutritional benefits. It's receiving scrutiny in this country because it was recently found in some brands of pet food that sickened, and killed, some animals.

This sort of adulteration, however, is not new, and has a tragic history in China.

Three years ago babies in China’s Anhui province were afflicted by a strange condition. The infants were getting thinner and thinner, while their heads seemed abnormally large in comparison to the rest of their bodies. 170 of them were hospitalized, and 13 died.

The cause? Malnutrition arising from fake baby formula, with protein contents well below the Chinese standard of 12 percent: thirty-one of the products used by the families contained less than 5 per cent of protein. One of them had only 0.37 per cent!(Source: China Daily) Might as well have fed the babies with water.

This is really a major cause of concern. The Washington Post reports China is the world's biggest exporter of fruits and vegetables, and a major exporter of other food products. Some of those products land up in the U.S.

Former FDA officials revealed that last year, inspectors sampled less than 2 percent of 199,000 shipments of Chinese food products.

Among those shipment the FDA did inspect and reject were pesticide-laden pea pods, drug-laced catfish, filthy plums and crawfish contaminated with salmonella.

Other known Chinese food hazards: the cancer-causing industrial dye Sudan Red, used to boost the color and value of eggs. Asthma medication fed to pigs to produce leaner meat. (Associated Press, found on MSNBC.)

As you shudder, let's ask what lies behind these practices?

One source is China’s fractured farming sector, comprised of small landholdings which make regulation difficult.

The AP article goes on to say, "Small farms ship to market with little documentation. Testing of the safety and purity of farm products such as milk is often haphazard, hampered by fuzzy lines of authority among regulators. Only about 6 percent of agricultural products were considered pollution-free in 2005, while safer, better quality food officially stamped as “green” accounts for just 1 percent of the total, according to figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Further, China's government "has found that companies have cut corners in virtually every aspect of food production and packaging, including improper use of fertilizer, unsanitary packing and poor refrigeration of dairy products," reports the Washington Post.

"William O'Brien, president of Hami Food of Beijing, which transports food for the McDonald's restaurant chain and other multinational companies in China, said in some of his competitors' operations, 'chilled and frozen products very often come in taxi cabs or in vans -- not under properly controlled conditions. That is something that people should worry about.'

"Not surprisingly, food-related poisonings are a common occurrence."

The U.S is a huge producer of food, so I'm wondering why it needs to import from countries with questionable food production practices in the first place.

I first sat up and took notice of China's food production practices in 2004, when the New York Times did a cover story about the staggering pollution on the Huai River in Henan province. In particular, the monosodium glutamate factory that flushed foul-smelling black liquid into the river - not only did fishermen find a severely reduced catch, many of the fish were deformed in some way. Villagers also noticed their skin burned when they washed with water from the river; the rate of cancer shot up, among peasants too poor to afford a basic subsistence, much less medical care for serious conditions. (Article: Rivers Run Black, and Chinese Die of Cancer)

It made me so angry. This was not long after the fake baby formula scandal broke.

Is China's enormous capitalist boom driving these entrepreneurs to have no moral regard for the consequences of their actions?

Are these entrepreneurs simply emulating what they've seen from some of their Western counterparts?


vvvvvvvvvvvvvvv---UPDATE---vvvvvvvvvvvvvv

From the Post's article Pet Deaths Spur Call for Better FDA Screening:

"Several Chinese suppliers conceded over the weekend that adding melamine to pet food ingredients -- now blamed for the deaths of many animals in the United States and possible contamination of the human food supply -- is but the latest technique for fooling U.S. companies into thinking they are purchasing a high-quality product.

"Before melamine there was urea, Chinese traders said -- another nitrogen-rich chemical that was used to give false high scores on tests of protein content but was abandoned after it made animals ill.

"The task of guarding against contaminants in imports has become far more complicated because an increasing portion of the tens of billions of dollars in Chinese food and agricultural imports involves powders and concentrates for the processed-food industry -- including the wheat gluten and rice protein at the center of the pet food scandal. Animal feed imports alone grew sevenfold from 2001 to 2006, the Commerce Department says.

"Such products pose three problems: Their makeup is not obvious by mere visual inspection; they can be easily and invisibly contaminated or intentionally spiked with chemicals that are not on the FDA's standard battery of tests; and their origins are often vague, because they have been through several stages of processing and trade."

Now an increasing number of legislators, scientists and others are saying it is time to modernize FDA's authority to trace the sources of food imports and punish scofflaws -- legal powers that experts say have barely evolved over the past 70 years.