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Thursday, December 04, 2008, 01.57 PM

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FRANK CHING: China must open up to restore its reputation

FRANK CHING
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According to the official Xinhua news agency, the Chinese government is implementing an emergency rescue plan to subsidise dairy farmers suffering from shrinking demand in the wake of the scandal.

Provincial governments, too, are taking action. The Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region government has come up with a US$14.6 million (RM50 million) rescue package to aid two of the country's largest dairy companies, the Yili Group and the Mengniu Group, and reduce their tax obligation. Subsidies have also been promised by governments in Hebei, Shanxi and Liaoning provinces.

But, as in the worldwide financial crisis, rescues are only a stopgap measure. What is needed is wholesale reform.

In China, ironically, the General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ), the main regulatory body, had granted "inspection-free" status to certain dairy companies, such as the Sanlu Group, the country's biggest milk powder manufacturer, as well as Yili and Mengiu, all of whose products were found to contain melamine, a chemical added to make it appear as though watered-down milk was rich in protein, and which causes kidney problems.

China's poisonous milk has long ceased to be simply a domestic problem. Countries around the world from Canada to Australia have taken action to protect their citizens by banning products that contain milk from China, including yoghurt, ice cream, chocolates and candies. The reputation of international brands such as Cadbury and Lipton has suffered because they used ingredients from China.

In fact, what is at stake is not just the future of the Chinese dairy industry but China's reputation. Coming after earlier cases of lead-coated toys, toxic toothpaste and poisonous pet food, this new scandal has dealt a body blow to the country's good name, just as it was basking in the warm afterglow of the Olympic Games, which were widely hailed as a great success.

Now, all products from China, especially food, are being viewed with scepticism. Even furniture, it turns out, is unsafe as some sofas were found to cause skin burns and allergies as a result of toxic gas emitted by an anti-mould agent.

The Chinese government has tried to contain the fallout from the melamine scandal by blaming lower-level government officials, saying they did not report to the central government in Beijing. However, this is far from convincing.

If the central government had been doing its job properly, this problem would not have arisen. It was, after all, the central government's quality control agency, AQSIQ, that exempted these companies from inspection in the first place.

It was also the Communist Party's propaganda department that issued a directive ordering the country's media not to report on food safety in the weeks and months leading up to the Olympics.

The Sanlu Group, the main company involved, sought to prevent word of its poisoned products getting out even while it was continuing to market the milk powder. According to the official People's Daily newspaper, the company had asked the municipal government of Shijiazhuang, the city in which the company was headquartered, for "strengthened management" of the news media.

Damage done by the party's censorship of the media was revealed by Fu Jianfeng, an editor at Southern Weekend, who wrote the following damning indictment in his blog after the scandal became public in September: "Actually, our reporter He Feng had received the information at the end of July that more than 20 babies were hospitalised for kidney stones in Tongji Hospital, Wuhan city, Hubei province, as a result of consuming the tainted Sanlu milk powder.

"But for reasons that everybody knows, we were not able to investigate the case at that time because harmony was needed everywhere. As a news editor, I was deeply concerned because I sensed that this was going to be a huge public health catastrophe. But I could not send any reporters to investigate."

Even now, Chinese authorities are trying to manage the news. They have also threatened to revoke the licences of lawyers who volunteered to help victimised families.

This does not reflect a proper understanding of the situation. What is needed is greater openness, not more control. If China is to fulfil its dream of becoming a great country, it will have to let reporters and lawyers perform their proper functions in society.