China's Corrupt Food Chain

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

08/17/2012

China's Corrupt Food Chain

An April report by China’s national broadcaster CCTV detailed the manufacturing process followed by 16 companies that sell preserved fruit. It made the meat-packing methods described by Upton Sinclair in “The Jungle” a century ago seem pale by comparison.

Enlarge This Image

Qilai Shen/European Pressphoto Agency

Shoppers look at packs of fresh milk at a supermarket in Shanghai in April 2011

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

Rotten peaches pickled in outdoor pools surrounded by garbage are spiked with sodium metabisulfite to keep the fruit looking fresh and with bleaching agents and additives harmful to the human liver and kidneys. The peaches are packed in uncleaned bags that previously held animal feed and then shipped off to big-brands stores.

read more The New York Times

Aug 17, 2012 10:19:52 PM | Current Affairs, Food and Drink

The comments to this entry are closed.

China’s slowdown: the impact on Africa A lot of ink has been spilled of late discussing the global impact of China’s slowing economic growth. But there has been little discussion however about how African economies will be affected. Now, ratings agency Standard and Poor’s has stepped into the gap with a report published this week. It says, in short, that the China slow down may be bad for metal exporters, but opportunities should present themselves for African manufacturers. The export of metals, agricultural commodities and petro-chemicals has been the backbone of most of sub-Saharan Africa’s more successful economies over the past decade, and China has been...

China excites public opinion, slanders Vietnam VietNamNet Bridge – To realize its ambition of controlling the entire East Sea, Chinese newspapers have published articles to excite public opinion, slander countries in the region, especially Vietnam. China – a hungry dragon in the East Sea China's greedy U-shaped line in the East Sea. Dr. Tran Cong Truc, former head of the Government Border Committee, analyzed China’s plot to monopolize the East Sea in his newly-published book entitled “Vietnam’s Imprints in the East Sea.” Below is an extract from the book. To implement its marine strategy and its ambition to totally control the East Sea, China has applied...