From the Wall St Journal...
China Executes Former Safety Regulator
Death Penalty Comes
After Food, Drug Woes
Attract Global Notice
By NICHOLAS ZAMISKA in Hong Kong and JASON LEOW in Beijing
July 11, 2007
China's swift execution of a top food and drug regulator convicted of bribery comes as concerns at home and abroad are mounting over the safety of Chinese products. Zheng Xiaoyu, the 62-year-old former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, was executed yesterday after he was sentenced to death on May 29 for taking bribes from drug companies and dereliction of duty.
The execution of such a high-ranking Chinese official is a rare event. Government officials charged with corruption often manage to negotiate lesser sentences given their stature and connections. Mr. Zheng appealed the verdict last month, but a higher court upheld it and the execution was approved by China's Supreme People's Court, according to Xinhua news agency.
Mr. Zheng's death follows a string of food- and drug-safety lapses -- ranging from tainted toothpaste and pet food to suspended anticancer drugs -- that have cast an unflattering light on China's regulatory standards.
Ordinarily, a case such as Mr. Zheng's wouldn't have merited the death penalty, given that the sums involved weren't extraordinary and that he confessed, said Fu Hualing, an associate professor on the faculty of law at the University of Hong Kong.
"But China is not in an ordinary time," Mr. Fu added. The widespread scale of the food- and drug-safety scandals and the international attention they have drawn put pressure on China's judges to impose the death penalty, he says. "It takes a courageous court to do the opposite."
One of Mr. Zheng's former deputies who was also convicted on corruption charges was given a suspended death sentence Friday. A second deputy was sentenced in November to 15 years in prison on similar charges.
An assistant at the law firm that had been handling Mr. Zheng's defense said the firm wouldn't comment.
Also yesterday, representatives of five Chinese state agencies that oversee food and drug safety appeared jointly for the first time to explain how they work together, an apparent effort to show that China is taking the issue seriously.
Commenting on the recent scandals, Yan Jiangying, a spokeswoman for the State Food and Drug Administration, said, "These cases have brought shame to my agency and revealed serious problems. We need to seriously reflect on what lessons we can draw from such cases and how we can carry out effective supervision and ensure the safety of our food and drugs."
Chinese officials who spoke at yesterday's briefing emphasized that China's safety problems stem from the fact that it is still a developing country.
Zhang Yanqiu, a vice director at the Ministry of Agriculture, said many farmers still work on small plots of land, and they vary greatly in their skills and how much they understand about food safety. Just six to seven years ago, their job was to produce enough food to feed the population, so food safety wouldn't have been a priority and the concept remains new to them, he said.
Also yesterday, China's quality-supervision authorities said they blacklisted 14 companies for planning to export substandard food products, according to Xinhua.
"They will be banned from exporting food products," said Lin Wei, an official with the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.
The substandard products, which included preserved seafood and fruit, were set to be exported to Japan, Canada, the U.S. and the European Union, according to the administration.
Some of the products were found to be contaminated by bacteria or contain additives such as sulphur dioxide in excess of levels set by the importing countries.
Authorities said that most of the severe problems occurred at small factories with fewer than 10 employees and that the government was working to cut the number of such operations in half by 2010.
