This story has me wondering whether I should be buying Chinese goods. No not because of the potential risks associated with the “additives” that seem to make it into this Police states goods. What worries me is I am supporting a State that is so serious about making my money they will execute some functionary whose actions might cause the world to slow down its purchases of goods from China.
Some free market sorts will will claim that by buying their goods I am pushing the entire state towards the ideal of a liberal free market democratic republic. I wish I saw evidence of this. What I see evidence of, if you take a look at the entire picture , is I am funding my own destruction by giving cash to a fascist police state whose Military is growing by leaps and bounds. This is a military that just might be sending arms to kill my soldiers.
Chinese goods are cheap but I don’t think they are a bargain.
China executed the former head of its food and drug watchdog on Tuesday for approving untested medicine in exchange for cash, the strongest signal yet from Beijing that it is serious about tackling its product safety crisis.
The execution of former State Food and Drug Administration director Zheng Xiaoyu was confirmed by state television and the official Xinhua News Agency.
During Zheng’s tenure from 1998 to 2005, his agency approved six medicines that turned out to be fake, and the drug-makers used falsified documents to apply for approvals, according to previous state media reports. One antibiotic caused the deaths of at least 10 people.
“The few corrupt officials of the SFDA are the shame of the whole system and their scandals have revealed some very serious problems,” agency spokeswoman Yan Jiangying said at a news conference held to highlight efforts to improve China’s track record on food and drug safety.
Yan was asked to comment on Zheng’s sentence and that of his subordinate, Cao Wenzhuang, a former director of SFDA’s drug registration department who was last week sentenced to death for accepting bribes and dereliction of duty. Cao was given a two-year reprieve, a ruling which is usually commuted to life in prison if the convict is deemed to have reformed.
“We should seriously reflect and learn lessons from these cases. We should step up our efforts to ensure food and drug safety, which is what we are doing now and what we will do in the future,” Yan said.
Zheng, 63, was convicted of taking cash and gifts worth $832,000 when he was in charge of the State Food and Drug Administration.
His death sentence was unusually heavy even for China, believed to carry out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined, and indicates the leadership’s determination to confront the country’s dire product safety record.
Print Story: China executes ex-food and drug chief on Yahoo! News 2
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