On tainted products exported by China...

It is perhaps news to the Western consumers, given the reports like http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/30/business/worldbusiness/30fish.html following a string of recent tainted products made in China, including pet food, toothpaste, and now seafood.

For over a decade now, it's common knowledge in neighboring places close to China (eg. Hong Kong), that consumers would not buy medicine from China (counterfeits that can kill), quilts from China (that use industrial waste like asbestoes as lining materials), etc. Horrific reports like tainted baby formula that kill local Chinese are not unheard of. Yet, you would not hear much official actions. Afterall, only Chinese were killed. As long as the official media are controlled, everything is well and good. Afterall, a few hundreds (or even thousands) dying will just help reducing the ballooning population of 1.1 billion, and the world would not notice.

And then, foreigners died. Tainted food exported to South American countries killed scores, but hey, lives are cheap in those places, and Chinese government can't be bothered.

Now, Americans died. First Chinese reactions is always, always, denial. Perhaps, they think if you deny it long enough or repeat the denial enough times, it'll go away. (Remember the SARS reaction by China, anyone?!)

In a way, the small farmers in the latest tainted Chinese seafood are not on the same horrific level as those who made tainted baby formula, when the latter deliberately use ingredients that they knew very certain that it would kill people (babies, in this case). These small seafood farmers just want to stop their fish and shrimp not to die (so that they could be sold).

The responsibilities fall squarely on the government for not having providing the know-how, support, and resources (like clean water) to these small farmers to do the right thing. No, if the Chinese government has its way, then foreign countries would just accept whatever that they produce, regardless of quality and safety, and would just shut up. And they would treat everyone like their own denizens: you die and it's one less mouth to feed. Shame on the Chinese government.