Call for death penalty over food crimes

Often, I think I know China well. However, just as often, it occurs to me that I don't really know what I thought I knew. The visions and experiences collected and stored in my mind while I am awake are gone after I have slept. Reasoning and understanding seem to last only for a few hours before becoming illusory: the images and meanings disappear one by one, stolen from me by apparitions and secreted away, never to be returned in their original form. The understandings that I have assiduously acquired are nothing more than banal when bound together to try and shape the oldest continuous civilization on earth. Experience, learning, and proudly possessed knowledge, gained from many sources and from interaction with its people, are taken from everyone who thinks they know China and passed on to others who share them smugly, use them with confidence, reverently broadcast them as Gospel for a few praiseworthy moments. "I know China." Then, time and circumstance mangle them until they are beyond comprehension. These ,too, will be passed on and shared as truth, only to be proved wrong again. The enigma is this: China never changes, but China always changes. Its people beset by burden, affected with melancholy, inured to bewilderment, and suckled on uninterrupted millennia of incalculable hopelessness and sorrow. "There is chaos under heaven and things could not be better", said Mao Zedong. This is the real truth: "China is a big country, inhabited by many Chinese" - Charles De Gaulle. China: don't ask, it is what it is... ,,,,,,,,W.D. Box

09/16/2010

Call for death penalty over food crimes

CHINA has vowed to punish people guilty of food safety crimes, calling for the death penalty to be applied in cases when the culprits "deserve" it, state media reported today.

A circular released by four government agencies including the Supreme People's Court and the Ministry of Public Security also urged a "high-voltage" crackdown on food safety criminals, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Food safety has become an issue of huge concern in China as scandals involving product contamination or the illegal use of banned substances keep erupting despite government pledges to clean up the industry.

At the beginning of the month, for example, officials in central China acknowledged they had waited five months before notifying the public that a brand of cooking oil had been found to contain excessive carcinogens.

Read more at The Herald Sun

Sep 16, 2010 2:09:27 PM | Crime, Current Affairs

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