The state holds so many selfish, deceitful people that they have given the entire country an ugly reputation
By Joel Brinkley
China is facing a product-quality scandal once again, another in a seemingly endless string — though right now the blind dissident’s great escape last month and the Bo Xilai family cataclysm are smothering all news of it.
Still, the new scandal and the Bo case derive from a single cultural cause.
A few days ago, the state said it had detained 54 suspects, shut down 80 “illegal production lines” and seized 77 million gelatin capsules used for prescription drugs, all of them heavily contaminated with chromium, a carcinogen.
The public security ministry added that it is “paying top-level attention to the case of excess chromium in capsules for medical use.”
How did this happen?
For several years, the government has been pushing health care companies to lower costs.
So, pharmaceutical manufacturers picked up a new strategy: They began using cheap industrial gelatin, normally used to make glue for shoes.
This comes barely a year after China’s “leather milk” scandal.
