Angry in the Great White North

Apparently melamine is poisons credibility as well as beloved pets (hat tip to Bourque):

Weeks after tainted Chinese pet food ingredients killed and sickened thousands of dogs and cats in the United States, China faced growing international pressure to prove that its food exports were safe to eat.

But simmering beneath the surface is a thornier problem that worries Chinese officials: how do they assure the world that this is not a nation of counterfeits and that "Made in China" means well-made?

Already, the largest pet food recall in U.S. history has heightened global fears about the quality and safety of Chinese agricultural goods. Now evidence is mounting that China has also exported counterfeit drug ingredients that could undermine the credibility of another of its booming exports.

"This is beyond concern," said a long-time U.S. food industry official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject. "All the major food manufacturers are terrified. They're worried this could lead to the cutting off of imports from China. And where do you think we get 80 percent of our apple juice concentrate?"

At stake for China is more than $30 billion a year in food and drug exports to Asia, North America and Europe.

The problem for China is that the government is trying to build a class of honest merchants in a society built on lies. Lying is second nature to the Chinese government. There is no accountability to the people, since the right to govern comes from control of the military and of the levers of the economy, without true elections or checks and balances. Lies permeate life in China. Here is a trivial example with regards to Chinese housing prices:

People in Guangzhou these days can be excused if they feel completely confused by conflicting official statistics about which direction housing prices are moving in the capital of southern China's Guangdong province.

On April 14, the Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Land Resources and Housing Management released a market analysis. Statistics in the report said the average price of newly built commercial residential housing in March was 7,029 yuan (US$907) per square meter, down 9.1% or 700 yuan from February. This was the largest monthly drop since last year.

It should be pointed out that the report was released after Guangzhou Mayor Zhang Guangning pledged to curb the rise in housing prices, saying it was now a "political issue". After Zhang's remarks, the Guangzhou municipal government unveiled tougher measures to cool down the property market.

However, just three days later, on April 17, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's top economic-planning body, published its own statistics about housing prices in 70 Chinese cities, including Guangzhou, which showed average housing prices in these cities continued to rise in March.

According to the NDRC, the average price of newly built commercial residential housing in these 70 cities rose about 6% in March year on year and 0.5% month on month.

In Guangzhou, in particular, the average housing price in March grew 8.6% from a year ago, and 1.2% from February. Both year-on-year and month-on-month growth rates in Guangzhou were higher than the average of the 70 cities.

In face of these two sets of official statistics, Guangzhou citizens simply feel at a loss to know what to do.

Disconnected from the truth, is it no wonder that Chinese merchants lie and lie and lie? During the SARS outbreak, the Chinese government continued to lie even as the death count mounted and a major outbreak occured in Toronto, killing over 30 people:

Bowing to international pressure, China admitted there were more cases than it initially acknowledged and is providing daily updates. The government also maintains the outbreak is under control.

However, in a letter sent to journalists, a Chinese military doctor said six people had died of SARS and 60 had been infected at a military-run hospital in Beijing -- all of which went unreported.

China on Thursday said its death toll from SARS has risen by two to 55, and the total number of people infected stands at 1,290.

When confronted with a lie, the Chinese lied some more:

And when a journalist from the Hong Kong paper Wenwei Po asked him what he thought of Jiang Yanyong, the doctor who revealed the cover-up of the epidemic to Time magazine, and also inquired about Jiang's situation, [Minister of Health Gao Qian] replied, "I don't understand why everyone is so interested in Professor Jiang Yanyong. We believe that China has fended off SARS thanks to national mobilization and reliance on scientific methods, mass prevention and group control under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese government. ... There are 6 million medical professionals and health workers in China. Jiang Yanyong is but one of them."

Just recently, Chinese-made baby bibs were recalled because of lead levels:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. pulled sets of baby bibs Wednesday from its stores nationwide after the bibs tested positive for high levels of lead, a store official said.

The bibs, sold under the Baby Connection brand name, came in packs of two to seven bibs, with embroidered prints or images of Sesame Street characters. Some were sold as long ago as 2004. The bibs were made by Hamco Inc. exclusively for the Bentonville-based retailer.

Mia Masten, a Chicago-based spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, said the vinyl portion of the bibs exceeded the lead levels set by Illinois for children's products. She said the company had worked with the Illinois attorney general's office to pull the items and later decided to expand the recall nationwide.

Lead, used as a stabilizer in vinyl plastic, can be 'easily substituted' for other products, [Center for Environmental Health researcher Alexa Engelma] said. She said the bibs' manufacturing tags show they were made in China.

Bird flu, contaminated sea food, deadly mislabeled rat poison, baby formula made from human hair, antifreeze in cough syrup -- every crisis is either the result of a lie, or is dealt with by lying.

Including lies to the Chinese people:

The problems here are compounded by the lack of press freedoms that keep the public in the dark about the food and drug safety woes of the country, experts say.

Most people in China are still unaware of the pet food scandal because the story has largely been ignored by the Chinese media.

Several Chinese editors contacted in recent weeks said that they were ordered by the government propaganda department not to report on the case.

"This has been a key," Steve Tsang, who teaches at Oxford University, said. "The government has the ability to censor and manage the flow of the news."

We can't help the Chinese people directly. But we can shut the doors on China. Send their lead-lined poison-soaked mercury-tainted counterfeit garbage back to where it came from. You want to cut back on green house gases, assuming you buy into the notion of man-made global warming? Shut down the Chinese economy of lies, within a year predicted to be generating more GHG emissions than the United States.

And when do we open up the doors? When there is accountability in China. When there is a culture in which lies are seen as intrinsically and morally bad, and not just a problem when they are exposed. When there is a culture in which the leadership submits itself for judgment by the people, and truthfulness is part of that judgment.

Is such a culture Chinese culture? I don't know and I don't care. All three thousand years of Chinese culture could be chucked tomorrow, and I wouldn't miss it.

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