I guess you guys have heard about the current scandal revolving around the tainted milk in China. Thousands of babies sick, etc. This of course comes after a couple of rough years for Chinese manufacturers with various tainted product scandals (lead in paint, etc).

 

It's an interesting combination -- an unregulated market + controlled press + very large population + one-child-per-family law + huge corruption problem. Quite the recipe for disaster, eh? It's become to common -- maybe we should bundle it all together, along with post-disaster governmental reaction, and label the phenomenon a "Chinese Fire Drill".

 

One thing I've been wondering is whether they would even know about a lot of these issues if not for the free press outside of their country. Of course in the case of the tainted milk they didn't need any outside help, but look at how far out of hand it got before any action was taken or the problem was even reported -- did late reporting cause European consumers to go un-warned until it was too late?

 

It'll be interesting to see how China reacts to this problem, which seems to be growing rather than shrinking. More regulation on those free trade zones, perhaps? I think so -- it's hard to see how they can ignore it. A crackdown on corruption would also seem to be in their near future.

 

What do you all think?

I think especially the corruption problem will be hard to take on. Bribery and officials have been the rule rather than the exception for the last couple of thousand years. I assume that that is hard to get out of the system.

Interesting blog post over at Effect Measure on this this today:

 

 

http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2008/09/the_chinese_food_scandal_at_le.php

The Chinese food adulteration scandal is spreading. I'm calling it a food adulteration scandal because it's not just milk any more. <

more at link

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