The front pages of all the major newspapers today are splashed with stories about the crisis on Wall Street. Two of the top five U.S. brokerage firms collapsed this weekend. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and Merrill Lynch was sold to the Bank of America. Both firms were heavily invested in bond securities that backed U.S. mortgages, many of which, as we now know, were insolvent. The companies suffered devastating losses as a result. Turns out “greed is good” is not the best philosophy for conducting business after all.

Apparently, the PRC’s Politburo is not worried about the rate of inflation as much as the rate of growth of China’s economy. Of course this is what happens to the economy that is built on cranking out cheap goods for export in the atmosphere of the global economic downturn. It’s hard to keep growing when the Europeans and the Americans are not buying. But what about the Chinese consumers? Hopefully, the easing of the bank lending restrictions and the cutting of the interest rates will lead to more domestic development. After all, the Chinese who are notorious savers should be encouraged to buy some of the stuff that they make, and some of out stuff, too.

Continuing to follow the tainted baby formula from China story: Mr. Zhang Zhenling, the vice president of Sanlu Group, a Chinese manufacturer of the milk powder contaminated with melamine, read a letter of apology at a news briefing, that said the company expresses “sincere apology” and feels “really sad” about 2 infant deaths and more than 1,200 babies getting sick after consuming the company product.

Apparently, there is no limit to how far some Chinese producers will go to squeeze out a profit. Who in their right
mind would think adding an industrial chemical to a product consumed by babies is a good idea? How about answering
that question rather than offering a luke-warm apology, Mr. Zhang?

The Chinese officials did arrest two people in connection with this wide-spread contamination. Apparently they are
brothers who have been selling about 3 tons of contaminated milk daily to various buyers, including the Sanlu Group,
China’s largest producer of powdered milk.

It seems that the wink-wink nudge-nudge culture of complacency, where even the largest companies stoop to buying from shady suppliers if the price is right, is pervasive in China. And the producers don’t care about the price the parents, whose children might get sick or die as a result of consuming poisoned products, have to pay.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Holding China Accountable, Economic Security, Health Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.