Editorials: July 2007 Archives

Editorial in The New York Times on Monday, July 16, 2007

The Chinese government’s extraordinary decision to execute its chief food and drug regulator for taking bribes and allowing the sale of tainted drugs is a perfect example of all that is wrong with China’s approach to regulation.

Beijing’s leaders — who disdain the idea of their own accountability — may think that killing the regulator is enough to reassure consumers at home and abroad that China is now ready to guarantee the safety of its products. But they’re wrong.

What China needs is an effective and transparent regulatory system and a clear understanding that its export boom will suffer if it continues to sell tainted food, toys and toothpaste. Until that happens — and there is no guarantee that it will — American regulators will have to do more to screen Chinese imports to protect American consumers.

China’s dysfunction has deep roots. The Communist Party leadership has muzzled consumer advocacy groups and the press. The government is also loath to do anything that might hinder the country’s breakneck economic growth. With no public accountability, shoddy companies are allowed to cut every possible corner in their pursuit of business, often under the protection of corrupt government officials.

The results include rivers laced with ammonia and toothpaste sweetened with an industrial solvent, as well as tainted antibiotics that have killed more than a dozen children and sickened hundreds. The good news is that for the first time China’s leaders are talking about the need for more and better regulation. And Washington and other governments can help with offers of technical advice and warnings about the cost of failing to take it.

But the scope of the problem is too big, too complex and too urgent for the United States — with $300 billion worth of Chinese imports a year — to wait for Beijing to act. American importers need to provide the first line of defense. Companies like Wal-Mart should send inspectors regularly to visit the factories of Chinese suppliers, to ensure that products are up to acceptable standards. Ultimately the American government will have to enforce these norms.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration has spent the last five-plus years emasculating the American regulatory system. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has seen its budgets repeatedly cut. The Food and Drug Administration has not received the resources it needs and today inspects only a minute share of all imported food.

It is hard to imagine anything good coming out of the China export scandals. But perhaps they will persuade Congress’s new Democratic leaders that America also needs a stronger and more transparent regulatory system.

By Makau Mutua | The Nation (Nairobi, Kenya)
July 02, 2007

Recently, there has been a dizzying parade of high-level visitors between Africa and the People's Republic of China. Some Kenyan officials have suggested that the country should increasingly look East to diversify its economic relationships and reduce dependency on the West.

Theoretically, this sounds like a plausible idea. That is until you give it serious thought. China, once upon a time the pivot of the oppressed Third World, has itself become a voracious and cruel imperial overlord. That is why Kenya and Africa must fundamentally recalculate their relationship with the rising Chinese leviathan.

China still sings the song about Third World solidarity, but its political and economic actions and interests belie the song. This does not mean that Kenya should not engage China. Rather, it means that Kenya must guard its rear.

In effect, we do not simply want to trade the imperial West with another crude exploiter. A smart foreign policy cannot ignore China. But neither can it gloss over China's ugly record in Africa nor hand it the key to our treasures on sweet but empty promises. We must insist on a relationship of equals.

In terms of untapped resources, Africa is the last virgin frontier. The Chinese government has only belatedly realised this fact because of the energy needs of its high-octane economy. This explains the State visits by President Hu Jintao to African countries such as Kenya and South Africa that did not previously exist on the Chinese political map.

With a population of 1.3 billion, the largest in the world, and in a race for global supremacy with the West, China wants every valuable resource they can lay their hands on. This second scramble for Africa is not very different from the one by the Europeans in the 19th century. It is about economic exploitation.

Let's for a moment contemplate what has happened in China. The China of 2007 looks nothing like the communist state that Mao Tse Tung established in 1949. After his death in 1976, China steadily liberalised its economy and has become in reality a capitalist State ruled by a single party that is only communist by name.

The Communist Party of China has instead devised a highly successful strategy for global domination driven by a strong military and State-directed capitalism. In the process, nothing is sacred - not the people, the environment, or human rights. I used to have a soft spot for the Chinese because they were one of the major checks on the unbridled global power of the West.

At the United Nations and other institutions of global governance, China used to be a firm voice for the Third World. But in the late 1980s, China started to distance itself from Third World causes as its economy grew fast and its national interests shifted. As China's interests became increasingly imperial, it moved closer to the United States and away from the Third World. India is doing the same thing today.

Nothing demonstrates the callousness of Chinese policy towards Africa than its support for the Sudanese government in spite of the genocide in Darfur. Even with the killings of 500,000 black African Darfurians by the Arab Janjaweed militias and Sudanese government forces, China does not even have the moral courage to call that genocide.

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