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Journalism of Courage
India has joined dozens of countries around the world in banning the import of dairy products from China. As contamination of infant milk powder and other milk products is revealed to be wider by the day, strong questions need to be asked once again of China8217;s regulatory mechanisms. In China, four children are dead and more than 50,000 sick after consuming tainted milk products. Given the range and depth of
Chinese exports, this has rightly set off recalls around the globe. But the point of the crisis is not to make a case for discouraging Chinese imports but to revisit once again the flawed mechanisms for reporting contamination and enforcing regulatory checks.
In the absence of visible reform in China, countries will be tempted to institute greater checks on Chinese imports. This is a wake-up call for China. Its ambitions of creating millions of jobs every year rest upon the expansion of manufacturing, and for that keeping China8217;s comparative price advantage. Toxic recalls will certainly not help.
