Lin Min

THE annual sessions of China’s legislature and political advisory body focused on issues ranging from inflation to affordable housing last week. However, unsafe food, a more perennial problem plaguing 1.3 billion Chinese, still managed to draw some public attention.

Much has been known that milk scandals have sent Chinese mainlanders to Hong Kong and Macao to snap up imported milk powder, forcing retailers there to impose purchase limits. The formula power hunting drama seemed to climax Wednesday when a father and son from the mainland tried to buy more than the stipulated three tins at a Hong Kong store resulting in a melee that led to several people hurt and five arrested.

The embarrassing scene is a slap on the faces of China’s milk industry and regulators in particular. When officials attacked foreign dairy manufacturers for hurting the domestic industry with a flood of expensive imports, few people would sympathize with the incompetent losers at home. Liu Peizhi, vice director of the general office of the State Council Food Safety Commission, told China’s top political advisory body Wednesday that about 90 percent infant milk formula on sale on the mainland in 2009 were foreign products. Adults may be willing to take greater risks by consuming domestic milk powder, but the lack of confidence remains shockingly visible in figures. According to Ma Ying, a Ministry of Agriculture official, half of milk powder in the market currently is from foreign dairy farms.

Even though the 2008 melamine scandal, in which at least six infants were killed and 300,000 children sickened, has not faded from our collective memory, news about “leather milk” dealt another blow to consumer confidence.

And even China’s top leaders are embarrassed. Vice Premier Wang Qishan told legislators from Shandong that he and other leaders were “very much embarrassed” by the country’s food safety record. He cited Premier Wen Jiabao as telling him that during Wen’s recent visit to Henan, an elderly woman gave him some peanuts telling him to eat with assurance as she had grown them herself.

Wang said despite the government’s efforts, food inspection remained weak because of a shortage of staff.

On a brighter note, China’s top legislature last month revised the Criminal Law, increasing the penalties on criminals producing and selling unsafe foods. The revisions introduced the capital penalty as the maximum punishment for serious offenders.

This may be a big step forward, but how much our food can become safer depends on how seriously the law is enforced. More than 400 years ago, Zhang Juzheng, a Ming Dynasty reformer, said the difficulty in governance lied not in making laws, but in implementing them. What he said seems to be a witty observation today. China has never been short of laws and regulations. The problem is that the laws are not respected, and even law-enforcement officials quite often do not take the laws seriously.

In the Sanlu melamine milk powder scandal, local officials, including then Shijiazhuang Mayor Ji Chuntang who was later sacked, had tried very hard to cover up the scandal. Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said Fonterra, a New Zealand dairy company that owned 43 percent of Sanlu, had tried for weeks to persuade local officials to allow a public recall of the tainted products. The recall did not happen until the scandal became too big to be covered up.

The melamine scandal continues to take its toll. The imported milk powder mania means losses for domestic dairy farms and higher costs for Chinese consumers. Liu, the official with the State Council Food Safety Commission, however, seemed to be optimistic, saying the phenomenon was temporary and would come to an end when confidence returns.

Liu’s optimism won’t be well-founded unless authorities enforce the new regulations effectively and impose deterrable penalties. Before then, Vice Premier Wang may have to remain embarrassed by not just the milk disgrace, but also more scandals to come.

(The author is editor of the Shenzhen Daily News Desk.)