China has executed the former head of the country's food safety agency for corruption and dereliction of duty. Seems a bit harsh, but given all of the problems that the country's been having on the food safety front, you have to have figured that some heads were going to roll (rimshot!!). Ok, that may have been in poor taste, though certainly killing the guy was much worse. Meanwhile, China's trade surplus hit a new record in June, confirming that, well, foreign trade is a really big deal to their economy.
I'll say this for China, they don't fool around with media circuses and lengthy trials that bore everyone to tears. They just lay blame at the feet of whomever is convenient and give them a needle. From the perspective of a totalitarian state, if there is a crime, then there must be a punishment, so to properly ensure respect for the authorities. If the person punished happens to actually be guilty of that crime, that's just a happy bonus.
Regardless, executing the former head of food safety doesn't even qualify as closing the barn door after the cow has escaped. The problems in China's manufacturing are endemic, and are entrenched in every aspect of their emerging capitalist culture. This is far from over, and it will take more than a few high profile executions to ferret it out.
1 comment:
Excellent commentary on the execution! Did you read about the woman who tried to live without buying anything made in China for a year? It was for a book, of course. It took a lot of time, but her family was reasonably cooperative. Her young son, however, was not so keen when they went into a toy store and there was absolutely nothing which was made elsewhere. I have since seen figures, and Chinese dominance in toys is not truly 100%, but it is pretty close. Importing such things, which so often are laden with various hazards (lead paint, loose parts, etc.), into North America, where middle-class kids are otherwise kept in pretty serious quantities of cotton wool to protect them from such hazards as playgrounds and meeting people their parents don't know, seems more than a little peculiar. How can price matter more than safety?
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