Unsafe at Any Speed – Melinda Liu
Newsweek is the latest to look into the recent food scares originating in China:
It may seem hard to remember now, but just a few years ago, pundits and the global press were marveling at how quickly China had come on as a major manufacturing export power able, or so the thinking went, to build just about anything fast, cheap and well.
Now the true picture is emerging, and it isn’t pretty. Far from the disciplined and tightly controlled economy China was thought to have, the ongoing scandals have revealed an often chaotic system with lax standards, where the government’s economic authority has been weakened by rapid reforms. [Full text]
A companion piece by Jonathan Ansfield looks at a study by Zhou Qing which revealed many of the problems that are now coming to light but which was largely ignored. See also an AP piece, “China Talking Safety, but That Filling Is Cardboard.”
