Ultimate Sanction
On 10 July 2007, China executed the former head of its state food and drug administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, for dereliction of duty and taking 6.5m yuan (about US $850,000) in bribes from the manufacturers of substandard medicines that had been blamed for several deaths. Zheng, who headed the agency between 1998 and 2005, had become the symbol of the quality control crisis in China's trade arising from the export of tainted goods – for some of which the authorities in Beijing had blamed him. The sentence reflected Beijing's resolve to wipe out corruption and to ensure consumer safety, China Daily reported on 11 July quoting the state Xinhua news agency. "Zheng Xiaoyu's grave irresponsibility in pharmaceutical safety inspection and failure to conscientiously carry out his duties seriously damaged the interests of the state and people," Xinhua had cited the high court as saying.
A court in early July 2007 had handed down a suspended death sentence to one of Zheng's subordinates on the same charges, the paper added. And a third official at the agency was in jail after being convicted of taking bribes and illegally possessing a firearm. "The nest of corruption in the food and drug administration has done incalculable harm to the state and people," China Daily quoted the Procuratorial Daily as saying.
China was the world's largest exporter of consumer products, and tainted goods represented a small fraction of the country's exports worth more than one trillion USD each year. However, officials worried that protectionist forces in the US could use the spate of quality problems to restrict trade. As Zheng was being executed, representatives of the country's leading food and drug regulatory bodies were holding a joint news conference to emphasize their determination to crack down on fake and counterfeit food and medicine. After weeks of denying serious problems or accusing foreign forces of exaggerating the issue, officials have recently begun to strike a less defensive tone. One senior official acknowledged that the food and drug safety network still allowed too many unsafe goods to slip through and said that at the moment the trend "is not promising...As a developing country, China's current food and drug safety situation is not very satisfactory because supervision of food and drug safety started late. Its foundation is weak so the supervision of food and drug safety is not easy," said Yan Jiangying, deputy policy director of the agency Zheng had headed.
Chinese authorities also ordered copies of Time Magazine sold there to remove a story about tainted Chinese products. Apparently, other stories about faulty exports have been censored. Officials have argued that they have been "smeared" by media agencies and are planning to take retalitory sanctions against Western nations.
On August 11, 2007, Zhang Shuhong, co-owner of the Lee Der Toy Company, which supplied Mattel, the world's biggest toy company, with toys based on the Big Bird and Elmo from Sesame Street and Nickelodeon's Dora the Explorer, committed suicide at one of his factories, leaving his factory littered with goods made for Mattel and its Fisher-Price division. Before hanging himself, he paid off all his 5,000 staff.
Read more about this topic: 2007 Chinese Export Recalls
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