2008 Woodie Awards
Why We Should Halt Trade with the Chinese
ERIC KAPLAN,OBSERVER OPINIONS EDITOR
Issue date: 10/7/08 Section: Observations
For the past few years, the trade environment with China has become increasingly volatile. You may remember recent imports from that country of tooth paste with lead in it, and toys with lad paint, but the danger is becoming more alarming.
Since 2007, China has allowed defective, altered milk to hit store shelves and manufacturing tables across the globe. Basically, milk from various dairies had been watered down to increase output, and then spiked with a chemical called melamine to fool safety tests designed to measure protein levels. The biggest victim so far has been baby formula.
By adding melamine to alter the protein, and thus allowing it to sneak by regulators, more than 50,000 babies in China have suffered as a result, with several deaths to boot. Three infants also ended up with kidney stones in 2008, even though the government knew about the problem since before the Olympics. As a face saving gesture, they did nothing about it.
This is in conjunction with an absurd practice of asking would-be protestors to submit applications to hold demonstrations, then arresting those who sent in applications.
Let us not also neglect the arrest of a man who took pictures of schools after the recent earthquake to expose shoddy workmanship and corruption, who was subsequently sent to a labor camp for a year without trial. And, of course, the harvesting of organs from the prison system to sell for transplantation.
China is a burgeoning, rising nation with a huge free market; so huge, in fact, that we have borrowed 40% of our national debt from them. They have their problems, just as we have and had our problems. New York even had its own similar milk scandal in the late 1800's. There are over one billion people there as well; dissent in such a large population can be extremely dangerous. This, I argue, is hardly an excuse for the treatment of their citizens, the control of their press, and the enormous block on internet usage.
However, I am not concerned about their safety so much as my own. I submit that we stop importing defective Chinese goods, (as Canada and Australia have done) no matter how cheap they are, until a proper regulatory channel is established by the FDA for goods entering our ports from that country.
Since 2007, China has allowed defective, altered milk to hit store shelves and manufacturing tables across the globe. Basically, milk from various dairies had been watered down to increase output, and then spiked with a chemical called melamine to fool safety tests designed to measure protein levels. The biggest victim so far has been baby formula.
By adding melamine to alter the protein, and thus allowing it to sneak by regulators, more than 50,000 babies in China have suffered as a result, with several deaths to boot. Three infants also ended up with kidney stones in 2008, even though the government knew about the problem since before the Olympics. As a face saving gesture, they did nothing about it.
This is in conjunction with an absurd practice of asking would-be protestors to submit applications to hold demonstrations, then arresting those who sent in applications.
Let us not also neglect the arrest of a man who took pictures of schools after the recent earthquake to expose shoddy workmanship and corruption, who was subsequently sent to a labor camp for a year without trial. And, of course, the harvesting of organs from the prison system to sell for transplantation.
China is a burgeoning, rising nation with a huge free market; so huge, in fact, that we have borrowed 40% of our national debt from them. They have their problems, just as we have and had our problems. New York even had its own similar milk scandal in the late 1800's. There are over one billion people there as well; dissent in such a large population can be extremely dangerous. This, I argue, is hardly an excuse for the treatment of their citizens, the control of their press, and the enormous block on internet usage.
However, I am not concerned about their safety so much as my own. I submit that we stop importing defective Chinese goods, (as Canada and Australia have done) no matter how cheap they are, until a proper regulatory channel is established by the FDA for goods entering our ports from that country.
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