Official Report Says Sub-standard Food Items Produced In China

(RTTNews) – Chinese government’s Quality Control agency for a variety of products reported that nearly a fifth of goods made and sold in China has been found to be sub-standard. The report released by China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine, reveals that the worst problems were found in canned fruit, dried fish, and fruit drinks.

The report was prepared on the basis of results of testing a wide-range of products ranging from food and consumer goods to fertilizers and farm machinery, in the first half of this year.

19.1% of the goods tested, were found to be below the required standard. It was found that many of the food products had been contaminated by toxins or bacteria, or failed to carry the required information on the label.

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China fears show food export quality key: WHO official

KUALA LUMPUR (AFP) – Countries exporting food must ensure its quality or else risk facing the kind of fears afflicting China over the quality of some of the food it ships abroad, a UN health agency official said Tuesday.

Fishermen sort freshly-caught fish at a harbour in Sanya, south China’s Hainan province August 2, 2006. The European Union has no plans to ban imports of Chinese seafood despite a U.S. ban on shipments of farm-raised catfish, shrimp and other seafood from the Asian country, a spokesman for the EU’s health chief said. (Stringer/Reuters)
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Shigeru Omi, the regional director for the Western Pacific for the World Health Organisation (WHO), warned that countries which failed to monitor food export quality would hurt their economies.

“In the long-run, it will undermine the reputation of the economy. Other countries should take lessons from this one,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a conference on climate change and health in Asia.

The United States last week added farm-raised fish and shrimp to its growing list of Chinese products deemed unsafe for US consumers.

Reports of problems with other Chinese goods has put the spotlight on the quality of China’s exports generally.

Omi said food exporting countries must adopt self-regulation by introducing tough laws and efficient law enforcement agencies.

“There is a need to establish tough laws. Along with it comes monitoring and law enforcement. This is essential,” he said.

Omi urged manufacturers and producers not to place profits above health.

“Global trade brings a lot of benefits. It also brings risks like this. We cannot be talking about money only. If we do … the economy and the people will suffer.”

Kids’ snacks in China fail standards

By ANITA CHANG, Associated Press Writer

BEIJING – Chinese inspectors found dozens of children’s snacks that failed food standards and seized hundreds of bottles of fake human blood protein from hospitals, officials said Tuesday.

China’s dismal health and safety record — both within and outside its borders — has increasingly come under the spotlight as its goods make their way to global markets. Major buyers like the United States, Japan, and the European Union have pushed Beijing to improve inspections.

Officials check some 90 barrels of bean sprouts at a workshop without a business licence in Xiamen, in southeast China’s Fujian province Thursday June 28, 2007. The workshop was found to have used bleaching powder to lighten the color of the bean sprouts. A government spokesman guaranteed the safety of Chinese exports on Thursday, in a rare direct commentary on rising international fears over Chinese products. (AP Photo)
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Inspectors in southwest China’s Guangxi region found excessive additives and preservatives in nearly 40 percent of 100 children’s snacks sampled during the second quarter of 2007, according to a report on China’s central government Web site.

The snacks — including soft drinks, candied fruits, gelatin desserts and some types of crackers — were taken from 70 supermarkets, department stores and wholesale markets in seven cities in the region, it said.

Only 35 percent of gelatin desserts sampled met food standards, the report said, while two types of candied fruit contained 63 times the permitted amount of artificial sweetener.

The report did not say whether any snacks were recalled or if any manufacturers faced discipline. Calls to the Guangxi Industrial and Commercial bureau rang unanswered Tuesday.

Some 420 bottles of fake blood protein, albumin, were found at hospitals in Hubei province but none had been used to treat patients, Liu Jinai, an official with the inspection division of the provincial food and drug administration, said in a telephone interview. No deaths or illnesses were reported.

A shortage of albumin triggered a nationwide investigation in March into whether fakes were being sold.

A state media report last month centered on an inquiry in the northeastern province of Jilin, where 59 hospitals and pharmacies sold more than 2,000 bottles of counterfeit blood protein. One person died from use of the fakes, state media said.

Albumin is a primary protein in human plasma that is important in maintaining blood volume. It is used to treat conditions including shock, burns, liver failure and pancreatitis, and is needed by patients undergoing heart surgery.

Chinese authorities have struggled with recalls following the widespread sale of fake polio vaccines, vitamins and baby formula. Such incidents threaten both public health and faith in the government’s ability to control crime and corruption and ensure safety of food and drug supplies.

In May, the country’s former top drug regulator was sentenced to death for taking bribes to approve substandard medicines, including an antibiotic blamed for at least 10 deaths.

Fears that China’s chronic food safety problems were going global surfaced earlier this year with the deaths of dogs and cats in North America blamed on Chinese wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine.

U.S. authorities have also turned away or recalled toxic fish, juice containing unsafe color additives and popular toy trains decorated with leaded paint. Chinese-made toothpaste has also been banned by numerous countries in North and South America and Asia for containing diethylene glycol, or DEG, a toxic ingredient more commonly found in antifreeze.

Beijing has striven to appear active in cleaning up problem areas. Inspectors recently announced they had closed 180 food factories in China in the first half of this year and seized tons of candy, pickles, crackers and seafood tainted with formaldehyde, illegal dyes and industrial wax.

Paulson: U.S. on guard against tainted Chinese goods

By Glenn Somerville

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday defended Bush administration efforts to protect consumers from unsafe products from China and said close economic ties between the two countries were vital.

During a wide-ranging interview with Reuters in which he said the beleaguered U.S. housing market was bottoming out, Paulson conceded that American attitudes toward China had soured over what some U.S. interests see as unfair trade tactics and worry about tainted food and other products.

“The perception of China in the U.S. has been on the negative side for some time because many in the U.S. are unhappy with the risks they see and some of the negatives they see in globalization,” Paulson said.

Concerns over the safety of Chinese products entering the United States have climbed after a series of recalls and product bans on items as varied as children’s toys to seafood and toothpaste, leading one lawmaker to call for an “import czar” to oversee import safety.

A Chinese customer waits past a tank of fishes at a market selling seafood in Beijing, China, Sunday, July 1, 2007. China called a U.S. block on its seafood ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘unacceptable’ and urged closer cooperation on food safety between the two trading partners, state media said Saturday. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
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But Paulson said such a step was unnecessary.

“I frankly don’t see the hole. I think it’s being dealt with and I’m not sure that the answer to everything is creating another government position,” he said.

CHINA AN OPPORTUNITY

Paulson, the administration’s chief economic official, has made pursuit of Chinese currency and other reforms a signature issue since taking over Treasury nearly a year ago.

Where many Americans see threats posed by the Asian giant’s growing economic might, Paulson sees opportunity.

“The fact that they’re the world’s fastest growing economy is something that some people (see) as a problem. I look at that as an opportunity that I’d like to capture,” he said, adding China was the fastest growing market for U.S.-made goods and services.

Paulson said he remains unhappy with the slow pace at which China’s currency is rising in value — a major irritant for U.S. businesses who claim they cannot compete with cheap Chinese imports — but he warned that alone won’t cure a trade deficit with China that hit a record $233 billion last year.

He said Washington also was pressing Beijing to open its markets more fully to U.S. goods and to financial services, an area where American firms have special expertise.

On other issues, Paulson indicated Washington has no intention of challenging a tradition in which Europe will pick a new leader for the International Monetary Fund to succeed Rodrigo Rato, who has said he will leave in the fall.

“We are very much in the listening mode and I want to see an outstanding leader,” Paulson said. “I’m just going to be encouraging my counterparties around the world to select candidates that are going to be leaders of real stature that will be highly regarded in capitals around the world.”

SHARPEN IMF ROLE

The United States has been in the forefront of countries pressing the IMF to sharpen its role in monitoring currency practices around the globe — another way to pressure China, now the world’s fourth largest economy and still booming, to let its yuan rise.

On the home front, Paulson said the U.S. economy remains healthy, notwithstanding problems in subprime mortgage markets, some of which he attributed to a lowering of standards during a long period of prosperity and low interest rates.

“Borrowers need to be wary of the risks they’re taking on in times of low interest rates, particularly if they haven’t fixed their rates. Lenders need to be wary,” he said. A downturn in housing markets, which has brought selling prices down, is “at or near the bottom,” he added.

But Paulson, a former chairman of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. who emphasized he closely monitors financial conditions, said that outside woes in the subprime sector, financial markets look sound and solid.

“Markets are volatile,” he said. “I haven’t seen a single thing that surprises me — it’s hard to surprise me.”

(additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton and Emily Kaiser)

Poison China Toothpaste Found Again

WASHINGTON —  Counterfeit Colgate toothpaste has now turned up in Canada, where testing has found dangerous bacteria but not the poisonous chemical previously detected in four U.S. states, a health official said Saturday.

In addition, store owners and police say they have discovered that the bogus Colgate was sold in Michigan and Virginia.

The FDA warned earlier in June that fake Colgate distributed in Maryland, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania may contain a poisonous chemical called diethylene glycol, or DEG, that typically is used in antifreeze. That toothpaste was the subject of a June 13 recall by a New Jersey distributor.

It was not immediately clear if the counterfeit products in Pinconning, Mich., and Arlington, Va., had been tested for DEG.

In Canada, testing did not find the chemical but did show high levels of harmful bacteria, said Paul Duchesne, a spokesman for Health Canada.

A Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman said Saturday she was checking into reports of the wider distribution beyond the first four states.

The bacteria pose a significant health risk, especially to children and anyone with a weakened immune system, Health Canada said. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is investigating.
In all cases, the toothpaste was labeled as made in South Africa. Both the FDA and New York-based Colgate-Palmolive Co. have said the products are fake, citing in part misspellings — “SOUTH AFRLCA” is one — on the packaging. Its true origin is unknown, according to the FDA.

A review of FDA import refusal records show that over the last year the agency has stopped shipments of Colgate toothpaste from eight countries: Australia, China, Britain, Indonesia, India, Mexico, the Philippines and South Africa.

A Colgate-Palmolive spokesman said nearly all involved Colgate-produced toothpaste samples that were later cleared for delivery to the company’s research and development center in New Jersey for routine analysis. Others may have involved diverted or counterfeit products, company spokesman Thomas DiPiazza said.

In recent weeks the FDA began stopping all suspect Chinese toothpaste before it enters the U.S. and has warned people not to use the products because they may contain DEG. The regulatory agency has identified six Chinese manufacturers that use the chemical in their toothpaste products, typically sold in the U.S. at discount or dollar stores.

Health Canada said it has identified 21 Chinese-made toothpastes that contain up to 13.7 percent DEG — a far higher level than anything found in U.S. testing. Canada too is stopping all imports of Chinese toothpaste until they can be proven safe.

The impending food fight

Victor Davis Hanson
June 30, 2007

While we worry about gas prices, the cost of milk, meat and fresh produce silently skyrockets. So like the end of cheap energy, is the era of cheap food also finally over?
Since the farm depression of the early 1980s — remember the first Farm Aid concert in 1985 — farmers have gone broke in droves from cheap commodity prices. The public shrugged, happy enough to get inexpensive food. Globalization saw increased world acreage planted and farmed under Western methods of efficient production. And that brought into the United States even more plentiful imported food.

Continued leaps in agricultural technology ensured more production per acre. The result was likewise predictable: the same old food surpluses and low prices. My late parents, who owned the farm I now live on in central California, used to sigh that the planet was reaching 6 billion mouths, and so things someday “would have to turn around for farmers.”

Now they apparently have. Food prices are climbing at rates approaching 10 percent per year. But why the sudden change?

A number of relatively recent radical changes in the United States and the world, taken together, provide the answer: Modern high-tech farming is energy intensive. So recent huge price increases in diesel fuel and petroleum-based fertilizers and chemicals have been passed on to the consumer.

The public furor over illegal immigration has, despite all the government inaction, still translated into some increased border security. And with more vigilance, fewer illegal aliens cross the border to work in labor-intensive crops like fresh fruits and vegetables.

The U.S. population still increases while suburbanization continues. The sprawl of housing tracts, edge cities and shopping centers insidiously gobbles up prime farmland at the rate of hundreds of thousands of acres per year. In turn, in the West periodic droughts and competition from growing suburbs have made water for farming scarcer, more expensive — and sometimes unavailable.
On the world scene, 2 billion Indians and Chinese are enjoying the greatest material.

On the world scene, 2 billion Indians and Chinese are enjoying the greatest material improvement in their nations’ histories — and their improved diets mean more food consumed than ever before.

The result is that global food supplies are also tightening, both at home and abroad. America has become a net food importer. We seem to have developed a new refined taste for foreign wines, cheeses and fresh winter fruits even as we consume more of our corn, wheat, soybeans and dairy products at home.
 

Now comes the biofuels movement. For various reasons, ranging from an attempt to become less dependent on foreign oil to a desire for cleaner fuels, millions of acres of farmland are being redirected to corn-based ethanol.
 

If hundreds of planned new ethanol refineries are built, the U.S. could very shortly be producing around 30 billion gallons of corn-based fuel per year, using 1 of every 4 acres planted to corn for fuel. This dilemma of food or fuel is also appearing elsewhere in the world as Europeans and South Americans begin redirecting food acreages to corn-, soy- or sugar-based biofuels.
 

Corn prices in America have spiked. And since corn is also a prime ingredient for animal feeds and sweeteners, prices likewise are rising for poultry, beef and everything from soft drinks to candy.
 

There is currently more corn acreage — about 90 million acres are predicted this year — than at any time in the nation’s last half-century. But today’s total farm acreage is either static or shrinking; land for biofuels is usually taken from wheat, soybeans or cotton, ensuring those supplies grow tight as well.
 

In the past, the genius of our farmers and the mind-boggling innovation of American agribusiness meant farm production periodically doubled. Indeed, today we produce far more food on far fewer acres than ever before. But we are nearing the limits of further efficiency — especially when such past amazing leaps in production relied on once-cheap petro-chemicals, fuels and fertilizers.
 

As in the case of oil, we’ve gone through these sudden farm price spikes before. My grandfather once told me that in some 70 years of boom-and-bust farming he only made money during World Wars I and II, and the late 1960s.
 

But this latest round of high food prices seems coupled to energy shortages, and so won’t go away anytime soon. That raises questions critical to the very security of this nation, which may have to import as many agricultural commodities as it does energy — and find a way to pay for both.
 

The American consumer lifestyle took off thanks to low-cost fuel and food. Once families could drive and eat cheaply, they had plenty of disposable income for housing and consumer goods.
 

But if they can’t do either anymore, how angry will they get as they buy less and pay more for the very staples of life?
 

Victor Davis Hanson is a nationally syndicated columnist, a classicist and historian at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and author of “A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.”
 

China Says It Is Cracking Down On Food Producers

China is closing 200 manufacturing plants found to be using poisonous products in food manufacturing.  Many Chinese food manufacturing facilities are now being inspected. 

The inspections will continue as part of the government’s crackdown on food safety, officials said today.While the ongoing inspections demonstrate a commitment to future food safety reform, the discoveries highlight the need importers to have proper track and trace controls in place to confirm the provenance of their products.The alarming list of substances found during inspections so far include paraffin wax, dyes and formaldehyde in such products as biscuits, flour and seafood, according to the Chinese newspaper, People’s Daily.According to the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, which is conducting the investigations, some processors were also found to be using recycled or expired food in their operations.

To date, the about 180 plants have been shut down, with 37 having their licenses removed. Eleven cases are now being dealt through judicial proceedings.

“These are not isolated cases,” said Han Yi, director of the administration’s quality control and inspection department, who addressed a press conference.

He said the inspections, which have focused on widely consumed foodstuffs such as meat, milk and oil, will continue, with rural areas and the suburbs the main targets.

According to the administration, most of the cases have involved small, unlicensed operations with less than ten workers.

The investigators may find they have their work cut out attempting to cover the whole country. While China‘s Food Hygiene Law and the Criminal Law forbid the use of chemical ingredients or harmful substances in food production, about 75 per cent of the one million processors spread across the country are estimated to be small, private operations.

Since the nationwide operation was launched in December 2006, quality inspectors have seized  contaminated or substandard foodstuffs with an estimated value of 200 million yuan (€20 million), according to preliminary figurers released yesterday.

Confiscation of products and site plant closure are the least of the worries for violators whose products are found to have killed or serious injury because those found guilty face sentences of at least 10 years in jail or the death penalty.

Problems with Chinese exports have been subject to intense scrutiny since the discovery of the banned chemical, melamine, is shipments of feed and pet food sent to the US. The contaminated products were linked to the deaths of a number of animals.

Made-in-China fears grip US

by P. Parameswaran

WASHINGTON (AFP) – China, a traditional source of cheap goods, has become an alarmingly top exporter of tainted and dangerous products to the United States, triggering concerns among consumers and regulators.
Reports of tainted pet foods, dangerous toys, fake drugs, toxin-coated monkfish and cosmetics, drug-laced frozen eel, illicit pesticide-laden mushrooms and other products have led to recalls and bans and potentially more stringent import and food safety laws.

Thousands of cats and dogs died recently after eating food made from wheat gluten spiked with melamine, a chemical used in fertilizers, prompting one of the largest pet-food recalls in US history.

Made-in-China toothpaste have also been blacklisted, fearing it may contain potentially deadly chemical reportedly found in tubes sold in Australia and elsewhere.

The concerns were compounded by the recall last week by a US company of 1.5 million of the wildly popular “Thomas and Friends” wooden train toys manufactured in China coated with potentially poisonous lead paint.

Chinese-made fireworks for the July 4 US Independence Day celebrations have also fallen into the blacklist, with reports that at least two types of such explosives have been recalled amid worries they could “travel in unexpected and dangerous directions” and pose “special hazards to eyes and bystanders.”

“I think we have reached a point unfortunately where ‘made in China’ is now a warning label in the United States,” said Democratic Senator Richard Durbin, a top campaigner in the US Congress for tighter food safety laws.

The Illinois lawmaker and another senator, Rosa DeLauro from Connecticut, held joint talks with US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach and the Chinese ambassador, Zhou Wenzhong, in Washington over the contaminated shipments of food products from China.

They secured a commitment from the Chinese government and the FDA that they would work towards a mutual agreement to improve inspections and overall safety of food products and drugs, said a statement from the two senators.

“This proposed agreement between the FDA and the Chinese government is a significant breakthrough in terms of food safety — and American consumers stand to be the big winners,” Durbin said.

China and the FDA currently do not have a binding agreement on food and drugs, there is no standard safety regulations between the two systems, and there are no mechanisms in place to inspect food production facilities and secure travel visas for investigations, the statement said.

The food safety problem surprisingly took center stage at the high level US-China Economic dialogue last month led by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Chinese Vice-Premier Wu Yi.

Following her return, China promised to overhaul its food safety rules.

“The top priority for building a food safety standards system is to revise as soon as possible the rules for farm produce and processed food,” said the director of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, Liu Pingjun, in Beijing this week.

In another sign of official determination to head off growing concern over shoddy or even deadly food and drug products emanating from Chinese factories, Beijing sentenced the former head of China’s food and drug agency to death on a corruption conviction.

China, which exports about two billion dollars each year in food products to the United States, is a top violator of American food safety standards, according to US authorities.

In April, for example, the authorities rejected 257 Chinese food shipments — far more than from any other country, media reports said.

The safety concerns over Chinese products could fuel demands in Congress, already worried about a ballooning trade deficit, for protectionist laws, experts said.

“At a time when Congress is keenly focused on the large and growing trade imbalance with China, this situation could be the kindling for trade protectionist legislation that is circulating in (Washington) DC,” said Andrew Busch, a global currency strategist with BMO Capital Markets.

Lawmakers are already complaining that Beijing has been artificially weakening its currency in a bid to flood the United States with cheap imports that they say is posing a threat to some US industries and manufacturing employment.

China is the second largest source of imports for the United States while the United States is China’s largest overseas market and second largest source of foreign direct investment.

Tainted foods are daily problem in Asia

By MARGIE MASON, AP Medical Writer

HANOI, Vietnam – As Nguyen Van Ninh needles his chopsticks through a steaming bowl of Vietnam’s famous noodle soup, he knows it could be spiked with formaldehyde. But the thought of slurping up the same chemical used to preserve corpses isn’t enough to deter him.

“I think if we don’t see those chemicals being put in the food with our own eyes, then we can just smack our lips and pretend that there are no chemicals in the food,” he said, devouring a 30-cent bowl of “pho” on a busy Hanoi sidewalk. “Why worry about it?”

The remains of a lunch at a shop north of Honoi, Vietnam, on May 15, 2007. Food safety is a daily issue in Asia where hot weather, a lack of refrigeration and the demand for cheap street food drives vendors to find inexpensive ways to preserve their products despite health risks. Enforcement is lax in many countries where deaths from food poisoning are common and farmers often spray banned pesticides, such as DDT, on produce. (AP Photo/David Guttenfelder)
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While the discovery of tainted imports from China has shocked Westerners, food safety has long been a problem in much of Asia, where enforcement is lax and food poisoning deaths are not unusual. Hot weather, lack of refrigeration and demand for cheap street food drives vendors and producers to find inexpensive — and often dangerous — ways to preserve their products.

What’s exported, for the most part, is the good stuff. Companies know they must meet certain standards if they want to make money. But in the domestic market, substandard items and adulterated foods abound, including items rejected for export.

Formaldehyde, for instance, has long been used to lengthen the shelf life of rice noodles and tofu in some Asian countries, even though it can cause liver, nerve and kidney damage. The chemical, often used in embalming, was found a few years ago in seven of 10 pho noodle factories in Hanoi.

Borax, found in everything from detergent to Fiberglas, is also commonly used to preserve fish and meats in Indonesia and elsewhere. Farmers in various countries often spray produce with banned pesticides, such as DDT.

“The people who do this want to make money. And if they’re stupid and greedy, this is a bad combination,” said Gerald Moy, a food safety expert at the World Health Organization in Geneva. “It’s the wild West.”

The quality of Asian food has come under harsh scrutiny after toxic substances were discovered in several Chinese exports.

Wheat gluten tainted with the industrial chemical melamine has been blamed for killing or sickening thousands of dogs and cats in North America. Fish containing pufferfish toxins, drug-laced frozen eel and juice spiked with harmful dyes were among other unsafe products shipped to the U.S.

Diethylene glycol, a sweet-tasting thickening agent also used in antifreeze, has been blamed for the deaths of at least 51 people in Panama after the chemical was imported from China and mixed into cough syrup and other medicines. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has halted all shipments of Chinese toothpaste to test for the same chemical reportedly found in tubes sold in Australia, the Dominican Republic and Panama.

The problems in Asia are not limited to China. Ice cream and sweets made with the same industrial dyes used for coloring garments have been found outside schools, and farmers have been caught dipping fruits in herbicide, to add shine, a day before going to market.

In India, pesticides often taint groundwater and produce. Coca-Cola and Pepsi have been dueling with a New Delhi environmental group, which alleged it found unacceptable levels of pesticides in soft drinks.

Street food is another problem. Millions grab everything from chicken kebabs to rice porridge from unregulated food stalls where hygiene is often poor. Unsafe preservatives are sometimes added, and vendors typically use the cheapest oils and ingredients.

But the food is hot, cheap and tasty — a combination that often overrides safety concerns in countries where many still live on $2 a day.

“Asking for food quality would be a luxury,” said Alex Hillebrand, chemical and food safety adviser at WHO’s regional office in New Delhi. “They’re hungry people.”

Some countries, such as Thailand, are trying to improve domestic food safety. In bustling Bangkok, where pots bubble and woks sizzle at makeshift kitchens pitched on sidewalks, markets are issued test kits that can detect up to 22 contaminants.

No one knows the extent of chemical-laced food in Asia or how it will affect public health.

“It might be that you consume it today, but you don’t see any effects for 10 years,” said Peter Sousa Hoejskov, a food quality and safety officer at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Thailand. “Some foods have issues that are developing over a long, long time and others you have an immediate reaction.”

China has faced outrage among its own citizens in recent years. Whiskey laced with methanol, a toxic wood alcohol, was blamed for killing at least 11 people in southern Guangzhou. Local media in Shanghai uncovered the sale of phony tofu made from gypsum, paint and starch.

At least a dozen Chinese babies died and more than 200 were sickened with symptoms associated with malnutrition after drinking infant formula made of sugar and starch with few nutrients. In another case, lard for human consumption was made with hog slop, sewage, pesticides and recycled industrial oil.

Some Vietnamese have been so shaken by news of tainted Chinese foods, they are changing their eating habits. They are avoiding Chinese-made products and paying more — up to $2 a bowl — for pho at an air-conditioned chain restaurant with signs promising no formaldehyde or borax.

“I am very, very worried about it,” said Duong Thuy Quynh, 31, who was eating beef pho because she was also worried about bird flu in chicken. “I’m ready to pay more to protect myself and my family.”

Chinese Government Staff: “Happy News President Hu Jintao; We Ready For Happy Time Olympics!”

By John E. Carey, Mort Kondracke, James Kennedy Olds, and Richard McDermott
Peace and Freedom
June 18, 2007

The headline reflects a status report to President Hu Jintao of China from his government one week ago.  Last Monday was June 11. With the Beijing Games about a year away, the big communist Leader had instructed his staff to give him a complete status report on China’s readiness to host this huge world event.

Monday, June 11, Hu Jintao, seated at the head of his vast conference table, readied himself to hear the details, the good news and the bad news of China’s preparation on many fronts, to host the finest Olympics ever.

Seated next to President Hu was one of his most trusted advisors: former Ambassador to the United States and now Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.  Yang speaks perfect English. More importantly, he understands the west perfectly. Americans might say, “he gets it.”

President Hu wants all the world to see how modern, enlightened and glorious his nation really is next summer.

Of course, President Hu’s lackey communist stooges gave him exactly what they thought the Leader wanted: A Happiness Report! Everything these days in the communist government of Beijing is Happiness!

Beijing had an entire day set aside to train the populace on how to line or queue up for trains and busses. “You mean we can’t just swarm into the door like a hive of bees on acid like we always do?” Not during the Olympics.

Beijing has had a no spitting day. Just practice for the Olympics. Mostly the old guys spit in the face of that one so a repeat is scheduled.

China is reviewing all signs written in English to ensure grammatical correctness, clarity and “that western thing.” Gone are some of my most favorite signs, like “Deformed Man,” (outside toilets for the handicapped) or the more sublime on park lawns, “Show Mercy to the Slender Grass.”

And would you believe that plans are in place to relocate 20 million migrant children? Yup. There are 200 million migrant workers in China and they leave their children behind. Beijing will be without homeless, migrant of other “street people” for one time only: During the Happiness Olympic Games 2008 Beijing!

As President Hu Jintao heard all his deputies report all he could think of was delightful Happiness!

Not really. Hu Jintao is no idiot.

At the end of a day of briefings, President Hu turned to Foreign Minister Yang, and said, “What do you think?”

Foreign Minister Yang said, in an unmistakable tone of seriousness without much tact: “If we do not change our way on Darfur, Mister President, Hollywood will force nations to boycott our Olympics.  We have much work to do. We need to clamp down on pirates who copy movies and music. And we may need to make some grand and obvious human rights changes to impress Europe and the Americans.”

Yang really does get it.

Just to make sure the Chinese have a good staring list of topics to look at, we at Peace and Freedom sent out our own team of status seekers so President Hu would have a complete idea on some of the things that still might need a tad of attention before the Beijing Games in 2008.

胡锦涛 Hu Jintao

Here’s the short, preliminary list of things that may need just a touch of management attention before the Beijing Games Begin. But, often, and sadly, fixing with a touch often requires a wand or magic dust.

Darfur. China is Sudan’s biggest business partner. In exchange for all sorts of aid and perks for President General Omar Bashir, China has humbly agreed to pump Sudan’s oil out of the African ground and sending it to China for refining. Because President General Bashir is a buddy of President Hu, China has agreed to be completely oblivious to what President Bush and others in the world community call the genocide in Darfur.

You see, President General Bashir has decided to eliminate however many millions of those intolerable people in Darfur he needs to in order to achieve his own Happiness.

There are a few small glitches, though, in President Hu’s current “Blindness to Darfur” strategy. The U.N. condemns it. The E.U. condemns it. NATO condemns it. Everybody condemns it. Both the Canadian Prime Minister and the King of Sweden and his PM spoke to Hu about it in the course of ten days in June 2007.  But President Hu, being “who” he is, can probably blow off the entire world, which he has been doing. One small fly in the ointment: Hollywood stars that are starting to refer to Beijing 2008 as the “Genocide Games.”

Displaced Sudanese children eat at the Sakali Displaced Persons camp in the city of Nyala in Sudan’s strife-torn Darfur region, February 2007. China must persuade Sudan to halt atrocities in Darfur and reduce executions on its home soil if next year’s Olympics are to be successful, a leading US human rights activist said Thursday.(AFP/File/Mustafa Ozer)
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By the end of last week, China had convinced Sudan to allow a joint African Union and United Nations peacekeeping force to come into Darfur. This is a terrific and major breakthrough. But China has more to do to convince the west that the killing and starvation in Darfur is over.

There is also a difficult dynamic normally overlooked in the situation between Sudan, China, Darfur and the U.S. Sudan’s President General Bashir is helping the U.S. with the war on terror: even as he himself terrorizes the refugees in Darfur. As the British say, “A bit sticky.”

Omar Hasan Ahmad al-Bashir

Tibet. We’ll just quote Mort Kondracke who spent the early part of his summer vacation in Tibet:

“Hundreds of thousands of Tibetans — along with an estimated 30 million Chinese — died in Mao Zedong’s maniacal collectivization campaign the “Great Leap Forward.” In Tibet, the Chinese caused mass famine by trying to change the dominant crop from barley to rice, which does not grow in high altitudes.”

“Tens of thousands more Tibetans were killed when the Chinese put down a nationalistic revolt in the late 1950s and almost all Buddhist temples were sacked and burned during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.”

“In the past 30 years, the level of violence is down, although last year Chinese border guards killed a young Buddhist nun trying to escape the country. Rather, China is simply dominating Tibet economically and politically — and the presence of huge military bases emphasizes the futility of resistance.”

China is currently forcing Tibetan nomads to move from their Yak herding areas to the cities. They have no jobs or city skills.

China says the Tibetan herders are overgrazing the Yaks and destroying the eco-system. This is laughable to anyone familiar with China’s record on respect for the eco-system. This is also laughable to anyone who has ever seen the vastness of Tibet juxtaposed to the small numbers of nomads and Yaks. It doesn’t look a thing like a Texas cattle drive. It looks more like a few lost Yaks leading a handful of nomads around.

We don’t mean to make light of this nasty human rights disaster. People who resist the Chinese are killed and those that relocate are never the same: they have lost their centuries-old way of life and they are lost in the villages without skills, money or prospects.

Tibetans graze their yak in the grasslands of the high Tibetan plateau in the county of Naqu, Tibet, China in this Thursday July 6, 2006 photo. China is forcing nomadic Tibetan herders to settle in towns to clear land for development, leaving many unable to earn a living, a human rights group said in a report issued Sunday, June 10. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Dalziel, File)
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Herders have been forced to slaughter herds of yaks, sheep and goats and communist officials have paid minimal compensation and failed to protect Tibetans’ legal rights, Human Rights Watch told us.  HRW said tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands, of people have been impacted.

China Arming Iran, Iran Arming Terrorists. Although this story has not yet received must traction in the national mainstream media, The Washington Times stands by its sources that have told two different reporters that Chinese arms have been track from China to Iran and then from Iran into the hands of terrorist targeting U.S. forces.

Philip Smucker, reporting from Kabul, wrote on June 5th that “Sophisticated new weapons, including Chinese anti-aircraft missiles as well as items made in Iran, are reaching Taliban forces in Afghanistan, according to government officials and other sources.”

Mr. Smucker continued, “A set of photographs was provided [the The Washington Times] depicting Taliban insurgents showing off new supplies of Chinese-made HN-5 shoulder-fired missiles [in Afghanistan].”

On June 15th Bill Gertz reported that “New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran. U.S. government appeals to China to check some of the arms shipments in advance were met with stonewalling by Beijing, which insisted it knew nothing about the shipments and asked for additional intelligence on the transfers. The ploy has been used in the past by China to hide its arms-proliferation activities from the United States, according to U.S. officials with access to the intelligence reports.”

Certainly if China is supplying arms to terrorist through Iran there will be additional confirmation which will undoubtedly disrupt relations with the United States.

Slavery and Child Labor and Abuse. A slave labor scandal erupted in China during May and intensified in June. Hundreds of teenagers were found working under arduous conditions in work such as mining clay and brick making. The children reported to aid worker that they had been held against their will for a year or more and fed just meager amounts of noodles and steamed bread (like a Chinese dumpling). Some said they had been fed only food and water. All were dirty, disheveled and malnourished.

Slaves released in China after more
than a year of forced labor. (Getty
Images)
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Amnesty International estimates that China has 20 million homeless or otherwise uncared for children. A large number of these children are the result of unions between China’s estimated 200 million migrant adults.

China said it would take immediate and forceful steps to end the practice of slave workers or exploitation of children living without protection. But this is another one of China’s ingrained, centuries-old “dirty little secrets.” Slavery is the worst human rights violation, but it springs forth from wide ranging tolerance of child labor abuses. We have not addressed child labor abuse as a separate issue here but as a subset of the same thought process that brought us this slavery crisis.

The China Youth Daily called the slavery a “shocking disgrace” exposing officials’ failure to enforce labor laws.

“When a law is massively undercut in its implementation so that it becomes a worthless piece of paper, then it’s necessary to rethink the law itself,” the paper said.

In both the cases of slavery and child labor abuse, the children work long hours averaging thirteen or fourteen hours per day, receive maybe one third the normal minimum wage , live togethter in hovels and receive poor diets.

In early June reporters discovered that merchandise bearing the Beijing Olympics 2008 logo was being manufactured and assembled by scores of children working long hours for meager pay.

Pollution.  China is on course to overtake the United States this year as the world’s biggest carbon dioxide producer, according to estimates based on energy data provided by China.

China’s emissions rose by about 10 percent in 2005, a senior U.S. scientist estimated, while Beijing’s data indicates that fuel consumption rose more than 9 percent in 2006, At these rates China will easily outstrip the United States this year, long before previous forecasts predicted.

The sun rises over eastern Beijing’s developing skyline in April 2007. Mobile air quality testing stations will be set up during next year’s Beijing Olympics so athletes and coaches can monitor pollution levels first-hand, the city’s vice mayor said Thursday.(AFP/File/Frederic J Brown)
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This data indicates that China’s energy consumption is growing at a striking rate as consumers buy more cars and heavy electricity consuming appliances.

Approximately one new major factory opens in China every day, adding markedly to pollution.

China is exempt from the pollution standards of the Kyoto Treaty because China is considered a “developing country.” India, another growing polluter, is also considered a developing country and therefore exempt from Kyoto.

The standards of the Kyoto Treaty only would apply to nations such as the United States which is a “developed country.” This is why the United States refuses to acknowledge the treaty.

According to Chinese government reports and statistics, more than 70 percent of China’s waterways and 90 percent of its underground water are contaminated by pollution.

China is consuming vast quantities of natural resources.  Oil, metals and other resources are now being removed from Africa.  At home, China is consuming its own resources at a prodigious rate.

Intellectual Property Right (IPR) Violations. The term IPR violations is just a high handed way of saying copyright, trademark and other legal measures that prevent the theft or exploitation of finished work are violated by counterfeiters or pirates.

These violators of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in China cost U.S. artists and businesses billions of dollars owed to patent and trademark IPRs.

Beijing Cultural Law Enforcement Agency officers destroy pirated DVDs and CDs video and music material in the outskirts of Beijing, China Saturday April 14, 2007. China has promised to pursue product pirates identified by American authorities in a new effort to stamp out its thriving counterfeit industry, the head of the U.S. customs agency said Friday June 15, 2007. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Dalziel)
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China accounted for about 80 percent of the 14,775 shipments of counterfeit goods seized at U.S. ports last year, said W. Ralph Basham, commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

For decades China has been awash in fake Rolex watches, Oxford English Dictionaries that cost $300 in England available in Beijing for $30, and pirated recorded music and videos at unbelievably low prices. Just the day after the blockbuster motion picture “TITANIC” debuted on U.S. theater screens, pirated VCR copies of the film were on sale on the streets of Beijing for just a few dollars. In this computer age, the practice of copying and bypassing the registration and licensing fees of products like Microsoft “Windows” has become a crisis for the owners of the IPRs.

Late in May Microsoft and Vietnam signed an agreement saying that all Vietnam government offices would use only licensed Microsoft products and all associated licensing fees would be paid by Vietnam. This is a huge step forward in the anti-piracy campaign of the United States. Before this, Microsoft products were available on the streets of Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City for about 50 cent U.S. each.

China has yet to make an agreement on computer operating systems.

But progress in the IPR dispute is apparent. On June 15, the United States and China announced a breakthrough in this long-time contentious issue between the two powers.

Under a memorandum of cooperation signed on June 15, U.S. Customs will provide China with information on the source of seized goods, and Beijing will report back within 90 days on the status of efforts to track down the counterfeiters, Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection Basham said.

Food Safety. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refused 257 shipments of food from China in April 2007. Here are some of the products rejected and the reasons they were not accepted into the U.S.

– Pesticides in frozen eel, ginseng, and frozen red raspberry crumble
– Banned antibiotics in frozen catfish
– Sardines and scallops “coated with putrifying bacteria”
– Monkfish containing the deadly toxin tetrodotoxin
– Most commonly, simply “filth”, a generic term for decomposition and gross contamination, which FDA agents found in salted bean curd cubes in brine with chili and sesame oil, dried apple, dried peach, dried pear, dried round bean curd, dried mushroom, olives, frozen bay scallops, frozen Pacific cod, sardines, frozen seafood mix, and fermented bean curd

More recently, the following tainted products have been in the headlines:
– Toothpaste laced with deadly diethylene glycol
– Dog and cat food containing fatal melamine mixed with wheat glutin

In the past year, the FDA rejected more than twice as many food shipments from China as from all other countries combined.

The FDA inspects about 1% of imported goods. The remaining 99% of the above products and others like them made it safely into the US and into your home.

The issue of diethylene glycol in toothpaste and other products if not a joking matter.  Diethylene glycol is poisonous and has und in Chinese made products for more than a decade.  In 1997, diethylene glycol from China killed dozens of Haitian children,  The FDA was unable to trace the chemical back to its manufacturer.  In years past, the appearance of diethylene glycol in products for people has been a persistent problem yeat China has been unwilling or unable to assist the FDA and other organization in identification of the source — known to be inside China.  Now diethylene glycol has been found in toothpaste for sale inside the U.S.

Many experts maintain that poisons are used in food and other products in much of Asia due to ignorance, a lack of proper training and cultural factors.

“The people who do this want to make money. And if they’re stupid and greedy, this is a bad combination,” said Gerald Moy, a food safety expert at the World Health Organization in Geneva. “It’s the wild West.”

China’s Typical Crisis Response. Faced with tainted pet food followed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) releasing data on a host of products from China rejected at U.S. borders and then the revelation that tainted Chinese toothpaste had been found in the U.S., China responded. On Tuesday, June 12, 2007, China’s number two envoy in Washington DC went on the assault to explain the rigor China uses to police and ensure the safety of all products including food.

Zheng Zeguang, deputy chief of mission of the Chinese Embassy, Washington DC.  (Getty Images)

The Washington Times carried the story on page one; which probably delighted the Embassy of China in Washington DC. The headline: “Chinese envoy warns of toothpaste panic.”

Chinese Embassy Minister and Deputy Chief of Mission Zheng Zeguang said “certain isolated cases” should not be “blown out of proportion” to mislead the American public into thinking that all food and drugs from China are unsafe. He reiterated that all products coming from China were safe.

Meanwhile, the Chinese charm offensive continued in Beijing.

Vice Minister for the State Administration for Industry and Commerce Li Dongsheng took more than 100 reporters from the international media on a tour of a government facility that houses seized fake products.

Fake, tainted or adulterated products from soy sauce to chewing gum were on display.

Mr. Li said, “Yes, there are now some problems of food safety of Chinese products. However, they are not serious. We should not exaggerate those problems.”

Mr. Li said “very good, very complete methods” are used by China to regulate product safety.

“We are very concerned about food safety in China and very concerned about protecting the rights of consumers,” Mr. Li said. “But we do not want to cause panic among the people.”

The problem was that everything they said was premature.  The Chinese wanted to get the food/toothpaste scandal behind them as soon as they could.  So without waiting for the facts, they went into a mode of denial and charm.

The afternoon that the page one story “Chinese envoy warns of toothpaste panic” was published, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a recall of some “Thomas Train” toy items. They were painted in China using lead paint which is toxic.

The very next day this was the headline in American newspapers: “More Toothpaste Revelations: Imported Chinese Toothpaste Marked as Colgate is Toxic.”

Congratulations ladies and gentlemen of the People’s Republic of China. By trying to rid the world of the food and hygiene safety story prematurely, your nation looks inept and worse, crooked.

Often, China’s government looks and acts like a fourth grader caught in the act of smoking a cigarette who then says, “What cigarette?”

A case in point: in 2003, China faced an epidemic of a disease called Severe Acute Reparatory Syndrome (SARS).

Three things happened when China realized it had an epidemic on its hands. In Phase One, China covered up the problem and denied it existed. The diseases persisted and worsened. Phase Two was a flurry of activity to impress the international community that China was on top of the situation. Most of this was for show and didn’t contribute a thing toward ending the epidemic. During this phase other nations like Vietnam and Singapore, that had admitted the problem as soon as it was discovered, eradicated the disease. Finally, China launched Phase Three: a show and charm offensive to convince the world that it did a great job solving the problem.

During the SARS emergency, the international media found out, for the first time, that China lacked sufficient medications, medical staff and hospital facilities to properly service their own population. Like many other things in China, the medical system was mostly a sham.

After graduating from medical school, the best educated medical professionals in China went to the west to work.

The World Health Organization estimated that only about 4% of China’s medical professionals were prepared for a disease like SARS. And the medical staff was severely undermanned.

Today, according to China’s own Ministry of Health (MOH), “In most countries, the ratio of the number of nurses to the total population is about 0.5 percent, but the ratio in China is only 0.1 percent.”

John Carey documented China’s response to the SARS epidemic in a Washington Times commentary under the headline “China’s Ham-Handed SARS Response: Omen of The Future In Disease Control?”

Recall the Bird Flu crisis? Phases One, Two and Three were used again. Hey, when you have 1.3 Billion people you can’t have a complicated play book. And forget about innovation. When an American football quarterback would call an audible for perfectly valid reasons; China is stuck. The only question China’s government leaders face is, what Phase do you think we are in?

In the current food and product safety crime, China is now launching Phase Three. Zheng Zeguang and Li Dongsheng are apparently two of the point men. The problem is, they didn’t wait for Phase Two to play out.

China launched Phase Three of the food safety scare early because there are other emergencies to handle.

Hollywood big shots are already calling the 2008 Summer Olympics the “Genocide Games” because of China’s intransigence and denial of the genocide in Darfur. China’s President Hu Jintao heard about it from Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the G-8 meeting and the next week from the King and PM during a state visit to Sweden.

China’s routine crisis response is unlike that of any other nation.  It is always formulaic and usually, at least in part, dishonest.

One Child Policy. The government of China has decided that each couple may only have one child. This policy is in place to allow for the efficient use of resources, to ensure China can feed itself into the future, and to improve the economic standing of the entire nation.

But people have resisted the state telling them how to run their lives to this extent.

As people have become more affluent in China, they know they have the money to support more than one child in style: complete with a private education.

But the poor people who elect to have more than one child face the threat of fines or forced abortions and other abuses.

The “One Child” policy dilemma came to a boil at the end of May in the southern region of Guangxi.

Many of the people of Guangxi want more than one child, not because they are affluent. They are very poor. They want children so that someone will care for them when they are old. This is a common cultural tradition in China, Vietnam and other Asia nations: the parents end up being cared for by the children as they reach their final years.

China fines couples who have a second child $1300, a means of population control that represents an exorbitant sum in an area like Guangxi where most annual incomes are only $130.

The communist government of China decided to crack down on law breakers who have had more than one child. “The people who didn’t have money, they threatened to knock their houses down, or punch holes in the roof,” a resident said.

So at the end of May in the town of Yangmei, several thousand people ransacked the main government office, a local official said. Xinhua said official vehicles were set on fire. About 100 police were called in, and some protesters were injured or detained, said the official, who refused to give his name.

“The police looked like they were afraid,” one witness said of the clashes in his neighborhood.

Corruption. A few cases are illustrative of the “culture of corruption” in China.

One of our contentions is this: that China has a “culture of corruption” that often causes western business people heartburn.

Consider just a few cases:

–In June of 2006, the Communist government in China sacked the Vice-Mayor of Beijing. A western businessman accused him of soliciting a bribe. During the investigation, officials discovered the Vice-Mayor, who was overseeing the construction of Olympic venues for the 2008 Games, had built himself a pleasure palace filled with young concubines on the outskirts of the city.

Mr. Liu Zhihua’s colorful private life emerged after he was removed from his post after a foreign businessman reported him for extorting a bribe.

The Times of London reported: “Mr Liu’s sacking has triggered accusations of widespread corruption surrounding the Games, and highlighted a culture of graft that is said to trouble British and other foreign companies working as specialist contractors on Beijing’s Olympic sites.”

The newspaper also wondered why the mayor was not investigated because China has a history of protecting the top officials when making a show trial for more junior people.

–That same month, a bogus ambulance picked up an injured pedestrian in Beijing, charging him about $100 US, and then driving him not to the closest hospital but to one much further away. The man bled to death.

Concerned Chinese newspapermen discovered a plot that included unlicensed ambulances intercepting emergency calls and charging exorbitant rates to collect patients.

–The SARS outbreak reaction and the thee phase response to crises is a symptom of the “culture of corruption.” The general disregard for public safety exemplified by the pet food, food and toothpaste fiascos are all symptomatic of the culture of corruption. In fact, Chinese culture has such an ingrained teaching to cheat the other guy that it will take a century or more to turn this ship of state around.

–On May 10, 2007, the maker of Budweiser beer went to court in Arkansas to claim that an Arkansas-registered company is illegally marketing beer in China, using the American brewer’s trademarks. Anheuser-Busch sued USA Bai Wei Group in Pulaski County, Arkansas, Circuit Court, seeking an injunction to revoke Bai Wei’s corporate charter and require a name change.

Bai Wei (pronounced By Way) is how the Chinese language trademark for Budweiser is pronounced in English, according to the St. Louis-based brewer’s complaint.

This incident is part of a decades long disregard for intellectual property rights in China, where western copyrights and trademarks are ignored. Some of us first saw illegally republished or “pirated” book in China in 1976.

–The Associated Press recently reported on a scandal in China’s medial system involving “doctored” and unhealthy blood.  China admitted to the sale of fake blood protein, a potentially dangerous and widespread practice that underscores the country’s problems with product safety.
    
State media reported one death from use of the counterfeited blood protein. 

The report centered on an inquiry in the northeastern province of Jilin, where 59 hospitals and pharmacies were sold more than 2,000 bottles of counterfeit blood protein. It did not say what the products were made of, but said they could “make a patient’s condition worsen and could cause death.”

The bottom line is this: until the culture of Chinese business improves, westerners will always be frustrated and wary of getting taken. More so in China than in almost any other nation in the world, the motto has to be “buyer beware.”. This will sometime become a stumbling block to good relations and good business.

Conclusion

Hopefully we have helped Hu Jintao and his many minion understand the problems they face as they march in lock step toward next summer’s Beijing Games. China has many policy difficulties that trouble the rest of the world. Unless some of these are addressed, there could be negative repercussions impacting China’s planned Grand Event.

And the list we have laid out above is not complete. China does not allow freedom of religion, freedom of speech or freedom of the press. There is only a one party system in China: communism. China has a very high number of executions following questionable trials. Dissidents in China risk a quick death. China restricts and controls use of the internet, and monitors email and cell phone conversations. There is no expectation of privacy in China and the rule of law is questionable.

There are no free and fair elections in China.

China seems to have a problem with wanton loss of life.

Deaths by traffic accident, mine explosions and cave-ins and other forms of disaster are record setting not just by numbers but when compared per capita with nations in the west.  The Chinese government seems to have an indifference to individual human life, perhaps beacause there are just so many Chinese.

Some belive that when you have a population of 1.3 billion, there is a tendency to discount the value of each individual human life.

In short, China could well suffer severe embarrassment before, during or after allowing western journalist to cover the Olympics.

In October of 2008, Hu Jintao will stand in the pantheon of Chinese political heroes. Or he will be the president of China fool enough to open the door to thousands of journalists: each seeking a “scoop.”
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A Most Significant Comment or Two:Well, I think we said ours was a short list and by no means complete.  We are sorry we missed this vitally important human right abuse:”Let’s not forget China’s own little genocide. The fact that Falun Gong prisoners of conscience are the only group (of prisoners) blood tested in jail and killed on demand to procure organs to rich foreigners on short notice really annoys me. The report ‘Bloody Harvest’ confirms that both the military and civilian hospitals are involved including the people’s courts.”
From: afad@canada.com