China Syndrome
China is once again at the center of another crisis of its own making. Within the past two months it has exported toxic toothpaste, toys and other products containing unsafe levels of lead, tainted food and adulterated chemicals. Worse, these are just the items that have made recent headlines. How many shipments of substandard products have slipped out unnoticed and undetected? How many people have been unknowingly impacted? China is the center of manufacturing just about anything imaginable. Unfortunately, it is also contains bastions of corruption and a government more interested in money and self-importance than in being a good world citizen. Instead of looking inwards to see how it can fix the rampant corruption and lax laws that allow for hazardous products to be exported, the Chinese government continually claims these are isolated incidences perpetrated by a few individuals. I have no doubts that some of these cases might be the result of a few greedy men. However, the vastness of some of these violations indicates something more insidious. The type and magnitude of these egregious violations could not happen in a vacuum. The problems are of such a large and pervasive nature that they can only be the result of a government that turns a blind eye or worse, provides a wink and a nod. China is quickly approaching the manufacturing equivalent of a China syndrome. Dangerous products are breaching the minimal (or non-existent) safe guards and are leaking out to poison the world. Until China learns that it has a duty to act responsibly it will never achieve its great potential and the world class manufacturing empire it is working so hard to build will collapse.
Posted at 8/19/2007 11:30:00 PM UTC
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Indeed. And there are two things more to think about. First, there are regulatory bodies that monitor and test US-made products. One assumes that these same bodies monitor and test imported products. Is it those US regulatory bodies that discovered that these Chinese products were toxic? Secondly, I think that what will ultimately clean up China's act is the budding Chinese middle class. As China acquires a large middle class, those people will start to make demands on their government to make China itself less of a toxic place. This in turn will improve standards for exported products.
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