From Toronto Star:
Zhao Lianhai’s tiny apartment, tucked away in a middle-class neighbourhood south of Beijing, doesn’t look like the command centre of an influential lobby group.
It looks like any apartment, anywhere in the world, inhabited by a 3-year-old boy: awash in building blocks, toy trains, fire engines and a complete set of figures from the Disney movie Kung Fu Panda.
But it is from these cramped quarters that Zhao, a 37-year-old father, used a computer and his deep personal resolve to build a website and a following to fight a plan to pay off parents whose children were poisoned by tainted milk.
The Chinese government had hoped the compensation plan – introduced Dec. 27 and funded by 22 dairy companies – would finally lay to rest the explosive poisoned milk scandal that rocked the country last year. The scandal wiped out dairy exports, triggered billions of dollars in losses and shattered international confidence.
