China trade spigot II

Sunday, I wrote about the low quality control on Chinese imports and today, by way of the Drudge Report, I find this from the New York Times;

Authorities in the Dominican Republic said they seized 36,000 tubes of toothpaste suspected of containing diethylene glycol, an industrial solvent and prime ingredient in some antifreeze. Included were tubes of toothpaste marketed for children with bubble gum and strawberry flavors sold under the name of “Mr. Cool Junior.”

* * * * *

Government investigators arrived here [in Panama] just days after customs officials in Panama said that they had discovered diethylene glycol in 6,000 tubes of toothpaste. The toothpaste was being sold under the English brand names Mr. Cool and Excel.

And the Chinese response;

“We didn’t do this; we didn’t make the bad stuff,” said Shi Lei, a manager at Danyang City Success. “It was probably someone else.“

So why are we trading with these backwards bumpkins? Would Americans tolerate that behavior from our domestic companies? Then why do we tolerate it from our “trading partners”?

In other news from China, the peasants are revolting;

The violence appeared to stem from a two-month-long crackdown in Guangxi to punish people who violated the country’s birth control policy. The policy limits the number of children families can have legally.

Corruption, land grabs, pollution, unpaid wages and a widening wealth gap have fueled tens of thousands of incidents of unrest in recent years, many of them occurring in rural areas that have been left behind in China’s long economic boom.

The central government, expressing concern that unrest could undermine one-party rule, has alleviated the tax burden on peasants and sought to curtail confiscations of farmland for development. But China’s hinterland remains volatile compared with the relative prosperity and stability of its largest cities.

They treat their own people with indifference, why should we expect them to be honest traders with the rest of the world? The problem is that no one is willing to make the Chinese pay for their uncivilized behavior – it’s up to the American consumer to avoid Chinese imports.

Category: Economy, Foreign Policy