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NOWHERE
is the truism about transparency being the best
prevention for tragedy as valid as in the fallout from
the serious questions of quality—specifically,
safety—raised against certain products made in China.
In the
latest twist to the saga of Chinese manufacturers and
producers under siege from global companies and
governments now demanding the strictest adherence to
standards and regulations, the cofounder of a big toy
factory in China killed himself earlier this week.
Apparently, according to initial reports quoting probers,
he had come under severe pressure from the recall of
nearly a million toys bearing the Fisher-Price label
that used paint with toxic levels of lead.
His
suicide brought to mind another death related to the
furor surrounding Chinese products: the swift execution,
several weeks back, of that country’s former food and
drug official for allegedly taking $850,000 in bribes to
look the other way while medicine companies violated
safety standards.
Some of
these companies have since been investigated for using
fake ingredients in a bid to cut cost—and some with
chilling implications.
Some of
the reported stories: antifreeze chemicals, deadly to
humans when ingested at certain levels, were used in
toothpaste; and the case of more than 10,000 pets dying
in the West for eating food that had been produced in
China, found later to have melamine as ingredient.
The
man’s swift trial and execution offers little comfort
that this whole nightmare—both to the suppliers in China
and, worse, to the end users in various countries—will
quickly go away. Especially not when, as reports
indicate, the man had been at the center of a network
that went untroubled for nearly a decade—where bribes
greased the regulatory mill to allow passage of
substandard medicines and products.
“There
can be no appeasement or softness,” intoned the official
government paper.
Indeed,
it’s easy to say that today, but one wonders, with a
chill, what has happened to the thousands, possibly
millions, who had been exposed in some way to any one of
the hundreds of medicines or products that used fake or
substandard material? Who can say, at this point, how
many of them would even have thought of linking any
illness or injury surfacing much later after their
exposure to the deadly material?
The
Chinese debacle will henceforth be played out as a
lesson in corporate responsibility and official
corruption. But there’s an angle we thought should be
zeroed in here, too. It’s simply that five-letter word
“t-r-u-t-h” which can’t be hidden in a regime where
democracy is fully alive and functioning.
No need
to go into so much detail here to express that point:
simply remember how Sars would have wrought much more
damage if the whistle blower, a doctor since harassed
for speaking out, had not done the brave deed.
The
Chinese bureaucrat who was executed would probably have
been caught much earlier, and the alleged mesh of
corruption he built torn to shreds, if he were working
in a country where the media operates freely—yes, even
if occasionally licentiously or rambunctiously as in
Manila.
As the
Chinese toy factory recall has indicated, for instance,
the story took nearly a year’s investigation by a
US-based newspaper, thus eventually forcing authorities
to take action. Indeed, without the pressure of
scrutiny, truth can’t win.
Vaccines
are used to prevent diseases that could turn a vital
person into a gravely ill one, thus stopping death from
overtaking life. It wouldn’t have hurt China to let in
some sunshine by way of a free media. Then it would have
avoided coming to such grief. |
