China: Caveat Emptor?
November 2, 2007
Not so long ago, there was an article over at The Onion making light of the Chinese political reaction to its dangerous exports discovered abroad. It gave me a laugh, and I sent it to the back of my mind (somewhere next to all those old Star Trek episodes).
It remained there until yesterday, when I read this New York Times piece. Clearly there exists regulatory failure when chemical companies–firms producing a central link in pharmaceutical commodity chains–can sidestep the state drug administration. What the Onion article shows (albeit hyperbolically) is the type of reaction we can anticipate from the Chinese Government. Cheap imports from China are probably one of the only things that are allowing (the few) American households that can still pay their mortgages to continue to do so. The Chinese technocrats clearly know this. Until there is a significant economic cost associated with this failure of government (sorry about the Eurocentricism), I don’t think we can expect anything more than a couple of show trials and promises to ‘do better next time’.
Then again, it might also be a pretty good idea to look at who is buying these inferior inputs. I’ll bet my B.A. that all this transpacific finger-pointing is running interference for a lot of North American companies that are just as shady as these Chinese scapegoats.
