Ways That Are Dark

Product Safety is turning into the Chinese news story of the year, and it’s not going to go away until there are fundamental changes to China’s manufacturing practices. A day after it was reported the toymaker at the heart of the unsafe toys controversy committed suicide, Mattel is recalling even more toys. This is a bad sign not only for parents, but for the reputation of Chinese businesses worldwide. In recent months it has been reported that of all companies in China, Mattel has one of the highest safety records and most sophisticated systems of ensuring product safety. Where does that leave the rest of the manufacturers?

Consumers fears will not be allayed until we get a glimpse of some really significant changes. No longer will strongly worded assurances and lofty gestures be enough. China needs to overhaul the way it things are made in its factories if it wants to enjoy the rest of the world’s confidence. The “Made in China” brand is too valuable for the world’s biggest toy factory to be lost as a result of shady businessmen who sell their friends “fake lead-free paint” for children’s toys.

Get more on the latest toy recall in The New York Times article Mattel Issues New Recall of Toys Made in China.

The head of a Chinese company behind a recall of toys that could cost $30 million committed suicide over the weekend. Zhang Shuhong, president of Lee Der Industrial, which supplied toys coated with lead paint to Mattel, was found dead in one of his warehouses over the weekend.

The Washington Post reports that:

His death dramatized the high stakes in an international scare over unsafe Chinese products and an increasingly vigorous government crackdown designed to restore confidence in the export industry.

It has also been reported by The Washington Post and The New York Times that the paint in question was sold to Lee Der by a company controlled by a close friend of the deceased.

Read more in Chinese Toy Executive Found Hanged After Export Ban and  Owner of Chinese Toy Factory Commits Suicide.

Until recently, the problem with Chinese goods has not been one of quality. The real problem is that people keep complaining about the quality of goods. What really irks the iron-fisted rulers, is the whistle blower, the one who points the finger at corruption and shoddy manufacturing and demands something be done about it.

This week The Washington Post has an exposé on the consequences and hard times faced by the whistle blowers, who have been trying to warn us of certain dangers for a long time. The article tells the stories of several concerned citizens, who passed on stories about fake medicines, counterfeit vitamin drinks, and drugs with poisonous ingredients. Invariably those who spoke out were arrested, lost their jobs, and were threatened and intimidated.

Read The Washington Post article, Safety Falters As Chinese Quiet Those Who Cry Foul, for yourself.

Who-sucks.com has put together a thorough list of dangerous items made in China this year.

With recent high-profile incidents involving dangerous goods imported from China, the American media has finally begun to warn consumers about the dangers of cheaply producing goods in a country hardly known for its strict safety regulations. After spending some time digging through product recall press releases, we’ve found that the mainstream media is still only reporting the tip of the iceberg when it comes to dangerous products imported from China.

The real value of this list is that it is being continually updated, so check out Dangerous Made-In-China Products: 2007 Timeline
and buyer beware!

A Chinese court sentenced a former official from the State Food and Drug Administration to death today. It’s the country’s second death sentence for a former drug regulator in the last three months. Cao Wenzhuang oversaw the pharmaceutical registration department, which gave him the power to approve the production of drugs. He was convicted of accepting more than $300,000 in bribes from two companies who were seeking approval for their drugs. Under Cao, the registration department at one point had a staff of 12 and approved 14,000 drugs in three months.

While the world has reeled at recent tainted food scandals, the more serious problem lies in China. The New York Times reports in its coverage of the latest high profile death sentence:

Chinese consumers are thought to be the primary victims of fake and substandard food and drugs, and the nation’s top regulators have been blamed for putting the public at risk by swapping cars, gifts and cash for granting licenses to drugs that in some cases have turned out to be deadly.

And while the recipient of the bribes is being dealt with harshly, what is the fate of the companies accused of bribing him?

Although some pharmaceutical companies involved in the scandal have been shut down and some executives have been jailed, the government has said little about prosecuting the companies and officials who paid the bribes.

Following up on the post Problems In China May Be Worse Than They Appear, fears continue to grow that recent discoveries of tainted goods only represent the tip of the iceberg. There is an excellent piece by Howard W. French in The International Herald Tribune entitled Scandals hint at reality behind China’s ‘miracle’ . The article takes recent events and places them within a broader picture. There may be some problems with Chinese exported goods, but the real problem lies with goods made for domestic consumption which don’t have to pass the same high standards.

In the broadest sense, what the deluge of scandals suggests is that reality is catching up with the old and familiar story line of the “Chinese miracle.” Indeed, this country has been deluding itself and much of the world with the notion that healthy and lasting prosperity can be built on a foundation of counterfeiting, of exploitation and of fraud.

As governing philosophies go, “Shhh, quiet, we’re busy making money,” is not a very inspiring one, and it leaves a country and its people without any moral or ethical compass, beyond crudities like “might makes right,” or “the ends justify the means,” or “I got here first.

There are serious costs resulting from this governing philosophy.

China’s environment is being ravaged at a pace that many experts both here and outside of the country say is unsustainable, even in the medium term. A change of course proves all but impossible, though, because it is argued that to protect the environment is to slow growth, and to do that is to endanger stability.

…a system that is so clearly based on influence peddling and on power networks, where accountability is elusive and where the individual stands little chance of legal redress, is a system that breeds instability and scandal and an erosion of trust.

Summing up recent events in China, 24/7 Wall St. figures that  Problems In China May Be Worse Than They Appear. Author Douglas A. McIntyre recounts the major revelations that have come to light in recent months. Collectively they paint a dark picture of the current situation in China. The troubling events consist of:

1. The Shanghai Composite is down over 15% in the last five weeks.
2. Nearly one-fifth of the sold-in-China products that were studied failed to meet the country’s quality standards.
3. The US has uncovered tainted pet food, toothpaste, and sea food from China.
4. 750,000 people die prematurely in China each year, mainly from air pollution in large cities.

The author sums all this up as:

Taken separately, the issues with product quality, falling stock markets, and acute health problems may not represent substantial cracks in the country’s economic future. But, taken as a whole, they may well spell the onset of a troubled period.

The original post appears at 24/7 Wall St.

The United States, Europe and other countries are becoming increasingly concerned about quality and safety failures involving Chinese goods. Chinese mainlanders have always known that products made for export are far superior than domestic products, so it was no surprise when an investigation of local food and household items found that at least 20 percent of products tested were substandard or tainted.

In the above photo, Chinese officials are checking barrels of bean sprouts at a workshop being run without a business license in Xiamen. The workshop was found to have used bleaching powder to lighten the color of the bean sprouts.

The New York Times reports on the recent product safety investigation in China Finds Poor Quality in Its Stores:

The government said, for instance, that canned and preserved fruit and dried fish contained excessive bacteria; that 20 percent of the fruit and vegetable juice surveyed was deemed substandard, and that some children’s products were defective or laced with harmful chemicals.

Regulators said, in effect, that goods sold in China were far more hazardous than the exports that were driving the country’s economic growth and now partly the subject of safety and quality debates.

Rather than earnestly tackling this seemingly urgent problem, China warned the western media this week against hyping the hazards of Chinese products. In todays article, China Says Media Is Hyping Food Problems, The Washington Post reports:

China warned the international media against exaggerating its food safety problems and stirring consumer panic, even as its inspectors found substandard children’s snacks and more fake blood protein in hospitals.

Tainted children’s snacks and fake blood protein are problems that have dogged China for years. The government position is that reporting on these issues is a bigger problem tha the fraudulent actions themselves.

Debate over China’s poor food safety record is heating up with the FDA effectively blocking the import of five types of farmed fish. It has been reported by The New York Times that:

Chinese goods make up about 22 percent of United States seafood imports. But they accounted for about 63 percent of the shipments that were refused by the F.D.A. last year for having animal drug residues.

China has vowed food safety changes, but has not yet specified what those changes may be. Online discussion seems to suggest a food safety agreement with China is not only desirable, but an urgent necessity. Check out the hundreds of responses on The Times Reader’s Comments on this issue.

Farmed seafood has now joined tires, toothpaste and toy trains on the list of tainted and defective products from China that could be hazardous to human health. The US Food and Drug Administration said it would block the import of farmed Chinese seafood until importers could prove the shipments were free of unsafe contaminants.

“I think we have reached a point unfortunately where ‘made in China’ is now a warning label in the United States,” Democratic Senator Richard Durbin, a top campaigner in the US Congress for tighter food safety laws, said recently.

Article source: ‘Made in China’ now a warning label, says US.