China

Milk Powder Mass Mailing

By Simon Elegant | January 2, 2009 | +

From time to time, mobile phone users in China receive a mass mailing text message that’s not the usual maddening spam (companies offering to supply illegal satellite dishes or equally illegal receipts for everything from airplane tickets to rent and of course offers for wonderful but amazingly cheap apartments). Mostly these non-spam mass mailings are from the government, for example exhorting the recipients in Beijing to show  the civilized face of China during the Olympics. On New Year’s day however, we received a two part missive purportedly from San Lu and 22 other companies responsible for the adulterated milk powder scandal that killed at least six babies and sickened hundreds of thousands more. The text message was an uncompromising acceptance of responsibility, an unqualified apology and promise that it wouldn’t happen again. There was also a promise of a treatment fund for victims and best wishes for the new year “with your families.” It’s hard to know what to make of this, that is, whether it is a PR exercise or an attempt by the government to damp down public anger over the issue. I’d personally bet the latter as the likelihood of all 23 companies getting together and penning this statement of their own accord is vanishingly small. 

Four Sanlu executives are now awaiting a verdict on their role in the  case. They could receive the death penalty, but even if they did, it wouldn’t make much difference, I am afraid. We’re bound to see similar events for years to come unless the government makes a huge effort to reform the entire food production and regulation system. (This sad but inescapable truth was acknowledged by none other than the chairwoman of Sanlu, who should know if anyone does. Nor is she liable to be suspected of trying to shift the blame by criticizing regulation, having already plead guilty and indeed having attempted to commit suicide after the story broke.)

Meanwhile, presumably in a show of evenhandedness, the police on Friday arrested or detained anyway, the father of one of the children sickened by the tainted milk, apparently to prevent him holding a press conference complaining about the amount of compensation families were set tor receive. Plus ca change….

Related Topics: China

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  • conscienceinchina

    “200000 yuan ($29000)for dead , 30000 yuan ($4380) for serious cases of kidney stones, 2000 yuan ($290) for less severe cases”—That’s the “compensation”! The life of Chinese is cheap, so cheap…

    If a message could “damp down public anger”, a cup of water would put out an erupting volcano!

  • cnnoway

    I don’t see any hope that the dire situation will change in the future. Only will it get even worse as the government’s ‘money’ power expands. If there is any solution to this problem, so far as I can see, it should be up to implanting freedom and democracy in a top-down manner. The other equally effective but more revolutionary way would be to break China into a number of different small countries so as to increase competition and mobility. However, few Chinese would fancy this idea as they have been long cultivated in an ideology that the state is bigger that a person. So, no way.

  • conscienceinchina

    Cnnoway: We don’t need to “break China into a number of different small countries”. The only way China will go is to become a federation, or commonwealth, in which each province(or state, region)will be really autonomous, just like the US, due to that the imbalances and differences between regions in China are so outstanding and large. The centralized, from-above-to-below governing system is sooo stupid and the base of corruption and sloth.

  • john2008obama

    Exactly, the top-down thing never worked in China.

  • cnnoway

    I seriously doubt the federation idea would work in any way given China’s long reinforced belief in unification since the Qin Dynasty. The will to become one unity has been always so strong that the Chinese even wish there would only be one government in the world. In this regard, federation of any kind will eventually end up again in a centralized power. This is why I said separation is a better option as the autonomy of a smaller state is not given but seized and secured by and within its own power. In competition, any attempt of one state to control others with force has to carefully consider and evaluate cost politically and economically, very much like the way European countries always do.

  • conscienceinchina

    Cnnoway: Of course, the precondition is, that democracy has conquered dictatorship in China.

    Separation is not a best choice for any economy and polity, including Europe, where now is more and more reunifying. Chinese history is many-time’s alternates of separations and reunion, that separations were always longer than separations, thanks to the Qin Dynasty unifying the Hanzi (Chinese characters).

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