Jian Guangzhou (簡光洲), a reporter at the Oriental Morning Post in Shanghai, on Sept. 11 became the first to report that 14 children in Gansu Province were suffering from kidney disease after consuming toxic milk powder produced by the Sanlu Group. The report dealt the company a vital blow, forced the resignation of several high-ranking government officials and severely damaged China’s national image. But it also saved countless innocent children from toxic milk powder.
Isn’t a journalist’s job to tell the public the truth? Jian wrote on his blog that he feels very sad, not excited, because a renowned enterprise with a long history had lost its sense of social responsibility and some media outlets lost their social consciences after receiving hush money.
The company has a big problem indeed.
But exactly who decided that melamine should be added into the milk powder?
On Sept. 21, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) said that the case exposed the government’s poor monitoring and control practices, but also reflected some companies’ lack of professional and social ethics — bluntly put, a lack of conscience. Wen said that Beijing will look into the responsibility of not only the authorities but also the companies involved and will not let any of them off the hook.
There could be more contaminated products produced by other companies. The question is why people add melamine to milk powder and other dairy products in the first place. How can these companies sacrifice the lives of their own compatriots just to make more money?
Obviously, Wen knows about the problems of his government and Chinese companies’ lack of corporate social responsibility, but he does not understand the change in people’s hearts. In the face of the excessive emphasis on economic development, China has completely ignored public ethics and moral education.
Some Chinese officials helped Sanlu cover its lies. If the journalist had not reported it, how could anyone have possibly known that the whole thing could be so serious?
But could Taiwanese companies bear some fault for being too keen on gaining petty advantages by importing cheap Chinese products? Since melamine is not on Taiwan’s customs checklist, contaminated products have easily slipped through and then spread across the nation.
Some products of Taiwan’s King Car Group were found to contain melamine-tainted ingredients imported from Shandong Duqing in China.
But the Chinese company claims that no melamine was found on its side at the time of export, so the two parties’ statements contradict each other, while the Taiwanese company suffers great losses.
We should seize this chance to review the food import and export process.
Similarly, since we do not want to eat toxic food products ourselves, we should also tighten quality controls for products being exported to other countries.
Exporting and selling toxic milk powder is both ruthless and harmful. As cross-strait exchanges occur in more areas, Taiwan has to learn from this lesson.
It needs to strengthen the cross-strait negotiation mechanism to deal with problems in the regular daily exchanges between Taiwanese and Chinese, in order to encourage both sides to move toward healthier and more sincere interaction.
The milk power contamination problems provide an excellent point of departure for negotiations.
Kung Ling-hsin is an associate professor of journalism at Ming Chuan University.
TRANSLATED BY EDDY CHANG
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