Saturday, September 27, 2008 Roperos: China’s social inequity By Godofredo M. Roperos Politics Also
A NATIONAL daily reported yesterday about the taintedfood crisis in China. The meat of the story appears to me deeply ironic to a country that rode to economic power on the issue of economic disparity between the rich and the poor.
China is among the dwindling number of communist nations of the globe, along with Cuba and North Korea. But even these countries are slowly succumbing to capitalism.
China today has achieved the status of economic power in Asia and is, in some ways, now competing in the global market for its products. But the ongoing tainted-food crisis that has gravely hit Chinese economy exposed the existence of the very thing communism abhors.
The story said that “while China grapples with its latest tainted-food crisis, the political elite are served the choicest, safest delicacies.” It seems that the communist elite have carved out a socio-economic niche that rewards them with special services, including access to a “special government outfit that provides all organic foods from farms working under the strictest guidelines.”
The Chinese elite even get hormone-free beef from the grasslands of Inner Mongolia and tea from Tibet.
“Secure food supply stands in sharp contrast to the frustrations of ordinary citizens who have faced recurring food scandals—vegetables with harmful pesticide residue, fish tainted with cancer-causing chemicals, eggs colored with industrial dye, fake liquor causing blindness or death, holiday pastries with bacteria-laden filling,” the report stated.
The latest scandal to hit its food industry has aroused undue concern and anger from ordinary citizens, especially as it involves kidney stone-causing baby milk formula. It struck some people that their leaders do not face these problems seriously. “So are normal citizens less entitled to safe food?”
China’s State Council Central Government Offices Special Food Supply Center has been set up “specifically designed to avoid the problems troubling the general population.” But it serves only the select few Chinese leaders occupying top positions.
In a way, this Communist China problem where disparity between the rich and the poor has been highlighted through the extension of social and economic privilege to the elite should be eye-opener to the young who still subscribe to leftist ideologies “that have been tried and tested and found to have failed.”
It is time they realize that their elders, who pushed reforms in the past, have failed. It is better to work within the democratic or capitalist system and strive hard for success.
