Flaw In The Ointment

by Peter Huck and Kelly Burke - June 16th, 2007 - Sydney Morning Herald

It was perhaps inevitable that at some stage China would trip, given the speed at which it hurtles towards economic supremacy. That fall, in the glare of the world's media, has come with the humiliating revelations that fake food and medical ingredients have been exported, triggering mass poisonings in the West. With the Beijing Olympics just over a year away, Chinese officials have been forced into frantic damage control.

China's crisis on the road to international respect reached a climax two weeks ago when Zheng Xiaoyu, the former head of the country's Food and Drug Administration and a 62-year-old Communist Party apparatchik, was sentenced to death for accepting $832,000 to falsify documents that approved fake medicine over a seven-year period. This dramatic measure was the climax of weeks of unrelentingly bad press for China.

The melamine scandal which killed pets in America . . . killed people in other countries. It was based on Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical. No one can understand how the managers of these Chinese companies thought they would not be discovered. Deaths from their actions were predictable.

Another poisoning scandal the Chinese are dealing with is diethylene glycol. Chinese manufacturers have used it as an alternative to glycerine. It too is a deadly chemical and many tens of thousands have died in numerous countries around the world from the exported products, mainly vitamins, cold medicine, cough syrup and tooth paste. It is highly recommended that no one consume any food or health product labelled "Made in China". Again, how could anyone expect this was not going to be discovered?

China is going to have great difficulty recovering from these scandals, as they are still a secretive totalitarian society. The real problem though is they are also a racist society. They have long been racist. In China enclaves all over the world, including here in America, the Chinese never intermarry with other races considering all but Chinese as inferior.

As noted in the article China is also illegally manipulating its currency to maintain its export supremacy. Once again, racism is at the heart of the arrogance that allows the Chinese to practice this currency manipulation. The Chinese simply do not consider that their "inferiors" will catch them.

China is both racist and totalitarian. Not a good combination. American officials and corporate purchasing agents need to expect more of these scandals and inspection of Chinese products needs to be stepped up dramatically.