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Updated Wednesday, September 17, 2008 10:30 am TWN, By Frank Ching, Special to The China Post

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Food cover-up fatal for China again

In fact, problems with Sanlu milk powder go back to March. Over the last half year, there have been intermittent reports of babies with difficulty urinating, or babies urinating blood.

On June 30, an inquiry from the public about the product was found on the official web site of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

The Gansu provincial health department spokesman said that on July 16 he had received reports of a rare kidney disease among infants. “Sixteen babies were hospitalized in the first half of this year,” he said. “All of them had drunk Sanlu milk powder for months.” The China News Service reported that many parents of sick infants had complained to their local inspection administrations and even sent samples for testing. However, they were told that the powder met national safety standards.

In July, a cable TV channel in Hunan province reported that an unusually high number of kidney-stone cases among infants had been found in a children’s hospital.

Given this situation, one must ask, why wasn’t something done earlier? One possible suspect: The Olympic Games.

In the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics, China was even more fearful than usual of bad publicity. The Propaganda Department put out a 21-point directive to the nation’s media. The eighth point said: “All food safety issues, such as cancer-causing mineral water, are off-limits.”

By putting food-safety issues off limits, the Propaganda Department made it impossible for investigative journalists in Gansu, Hunan and other provinces to dig into the situation and file reports warning the rest of the country about the dangers lying in the harmless looking milk powder.

Sanlu reportedly discovered the problem with its product August 1, a week before the opening of the Olympic Games. It waited until September 11 before issuing the product recall. By then, of course, the Games had ended although the Paralympics were still on.

China’s Communist Party should realize that when it gags the media to try to make the Chinese Government look good, it is doing so at the risk of the life and health of the Chinese people. And when the world finds out, the price China has to pay in terms of its reputation far outweighs whatever short-terms gains it has made.

Columnist Frank Ching can be reached at Frank.ching@gmail.com

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