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beijing olympics
17 Jul 2007 04:25 pmWith little more than a year to go until the 2008 Olympics, the host country can only expect more and more international scrutiny on its various - and many - social problems.
As with most authoritarian states, China doesn't like to see its flaws pointed out, and expects the international community to also keep their lips zipped. For the last decade, much of the world has done just that, in order to bank in on China's so-called economic boom.
But it's likely that the 2008 Olympics will force the international community to examine China under a more critical lens. It is no longer good enough not care where the products come from as long as it's cheap. Now that the developed countries are sending their best athletes into the unknown, they are no longer content to let sleeping dogs lie.
Of course, one factor to the trade brawl is that neither China nor USA want to show they have a bigger export control problem than the other, leading to increasing numbers of import bans that's starting to look rather juvenile.
Or it would look that way if USA was the only country rearing its head. High numbers of fatalities occurred in Panama as a result of a Chinese factory replacing medical grade glycerine with industrial diethylene glycol; 24 brands of toothpaste containing DEG were banned by Canada (23 by USA, 2 recalled by Australia); thousands of pets were reportedly killed by pet food contaminated with melamine in USA; large numbers of unsafe electrical appliances and hardware were recalled by the Australian ACCC; toys containing lead-based paint recalled by most western countries; and Japan has now complained of unacceptably high levels of banned pesticides and antibiotics in tea leaves, peanuts and eel. Reportedly, a Hokkaido man cooking with a Chinese wok noticed silvery liquid seeping out from the edge of the wok, which was found to be a liquefied mixture of molten lead and cadmium, the stuff you might find in a battery =/ It's also recently been reported in Japan that some Beijing restaurants mix 60% minced cardboard in 40% pork to make pork buns.
In spite of all these claims, Beijing insists that 99% of Chinese exports are safe, and just a few bad apples are giving the rest a bad name. Meanwhile, Wall Street Journal points out in USA, "China has accounted for 60% of all consumer-product recalls this year", and Sydney Morning Herald likewise found that approximately half of recalled products, where the companies are willing to divulge, are from China.
While some foreign reporters are willing to give China concession, others are quick to point out that the problem lies deeper than executing the Food and Drugs Administration chief, an act that looks by day more like a desperate grab for a scapegoat, or perhaps more poetically, desperately sacrificing the sacrificial lamb.
Because some people seem displeased that I draw my sources from the Epochtimes, today I shall bring to you the commentaries provided by journalists of the esteemed Wall Street Journal =P
Both Are Chinese Export Products Unsafe? and Jeremy Haft's The China Syndrome point out that the inherent problem lies in the structure of Chinese industries, consisting of a long chain of middlemen, fractured organisation, with no practical quality control.
This suggests that the problem starts at the base of the pyramid, where any quality material (if such exists) can get mixed with substandard material, and however perfected the final processing, the result will be inevitably substandard because of the lack of standardisation. Counterfeit certification are often a problem, as Australia has discovered with electric products.
Call me biased, but personally I think Emily Parker's article 'Made in China' has pinned the crux of the problem:
While some will say that this same kind of unethical behavior was rampant in the U.S. roughly a century ago, there are elements here that are particular to China. One commonly heard theory is that the Chinese have nothing to believe in: The communists destroyed traditional values and beliefs, leaving nothing sustainable in their place. Now that many Chinese have lost faith in communist ideology, getting rich has, in a sense, become the national religion.
The chaos of communist rule over the past decades -- from famines to purges to neighbors informing on one another -- has also likely contributed to the blurring of moral distinctions. "The Cultural Revolution created an enormous dent in morality. Society [was] in confusion for a long time. Couple that with the madness of trying to get rich -- you put these things together and you end up getting contaminated toothpaste and pet food," says Peter Humphrey, longtime China hand and founder of risk-management consultancy ChinaWhys.
The same article reminds westerners that this "new" scare is nothing new to the native Chinese (and indeed isn't), who have been used to trying to navigate the precarious path of staying healthy amongst a sea of substandard products.
Exported items will only be the first topic to jump under international scrutiny before the Beijing Olympics. Many other issues, not unrelated to substandard food and products ("counterfeit" bottled water consisting of tap water, for one thing...Chinese tap-water is "non-potable"), as well as human rights abuses and unhealthy levels of pollution will only experience increasing critical debate, however fervently Beijing might try to sweep it under the carpet.
As with most authoritarian states, China doesn't like to see its flaws pointed out, and expects the international community to also keep their lips zipped. For the last decade, much of the world has done just that, in order to bank in on China's so-called economic boom.
But it's likely that the 2008 Olympics will force the international community to examine China under a more critical lens. It is no longer good enough not care where the products come from as long as it's cheap. Now that the developed countries are sending their best athletes into the unknown, they are no longer content to let sleeping dogs lie.
Of course, one factor to the trade brawl is that neither China nor USA want to show they have a bigger export control problem than the other, leading to increasing numbers of import bans that's starting to look rather juvenile.
Or it would look that way if USA was the only country rearing its head. High numbers of fatalities occurred in Panama as a result of a Chinese factory replacing medical grade glycerine with industrial diethylene glycol; 24 brands of toothpaste containing DEG were banned by Canada (23 by USA, 2 recalled by Australia); thousands of pets were reportedly killed by pet food contaminated with melamine in USA; large numbers of unsafe electrical appliances and hardware were recalled by the Australian ACCC; toys containing lead-based paint recalled by most western countries; and Japan has now complained of unacceptably high levels of banned pesticides and antibiotics in tea leaves, peanuts and eel. Reportedly, a Hokkaido man cooking with a Chinese wok noticed silvery liquid seeping out from the edge of the wok, which was found to be a liquefied mixture of molten lead and cadmium, the stuff you might find in a battery =/ It's also recently been reported in Japan that some Beijing restaurants mix 60% minced cardboard in 40% pork to make pork buns.
In spite of all these claims, Beijing insists that 99% of Chinese exports are safe, and just a few bad apples are giving the rest a bad name. Meanwhile, Wall Street Journal points out in USA, "China has accounted for 60% of all consumer-product recalls this year", and Sydney Morning Herald likewise found that approximately half of recalled products, where the companies are willing to divulge, are from China.
While some foreign reporters are willing to give China concession, others are quick to point out that the problem lies deeper than executing the Food and Drugs Administration chief, an act that looks by day more like a desperate grab for a scapegoat, or perhaps more poetically, desperately sacrificing the sacrificial lamb.
Because some people seem displeased that I draw my sources from the Epochtimes, today I shall bring to you the commentaries provided by journalists of the esteemed Wall Street Journal =P
Both Are Chinese Export Products Unsafe? and Jeremy Haft's The China Syndrome point out that the inherent problem lies in the structure of Chinese industries, consisting of a long chain of middlemen, fractured organisation, with no practical quality control.
This suggests that the problem starts at the base of the pyramid, where any quality material (if such exists) can get mixed with substandard material, and however perfected the final processing, the result will be inevitably substandard because of the lack of standardisation. Counterfeit certification are often a problem, as Australia has discovered with electric products.
Call me biased, but personally I think Emily Parker's article 'Made in China' has pinned the crux of the problem:
While some will say that this same kind of unethical behavior was rampant in the U.S. roughly a century ago, there are elements here that are particular to China. One commonly heard theory is that the Chinese have nothing to believe in: The communists destroyed traditional values and beliefs, leaving nothing sustainable in their place. Now that many Chinese have lost faith in communist ideology, getting rich has, in a sense, become the national religion.
The chaos of communist rule over the past decades -- from famines to purges to neighbors informing on one another -- has also likely contributed to the blurring of moral distinctions. "The Cultural Revolution created an enormous dent in morality. Society [was] in confusion for a long time. Couple that with the madness of trying to get rich -- you put these things together and you end up getting contaminated toothpaste and pet food," says Peter Humphrey, longtime China hand and founder of risk-management consultancy ChinaWhys.
The same article reminds westerners that this "new" scare is nothing new to the native Chinese (and indeed isn't), who have been used to trying to navigate the precarious path of staying healthy amongst a sea of substandard products.
Exported items will only be the first topic to jump under international scrutiny before the Beijing Olympics. Many other issues, not unrelated to substandard food and products ("counterfeit" bottled water consisting of tap water, for one thing...Chinese tap-water is "non-potable"), as well as human rights abuses and unhealthy levels of pollution will only experience increasing critical debate, however fervently Beijing might try to sweep it under the carpet.
