Remember back in August when China's Vice Premier, Wu Yi, China's most successful troubleshooter, was named as head of a cabinet level panel to address the issues of standards, product safety, and quality control in China's food industry? China just announced the arrest of 774 individuals in what the Associated Press called "a crackdown on substandard goods, part of ongoing efforts to calm international worries over the quality of the country's products."




According to the AP, "The General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said the arrests were the result of 626 criminal investigations nationwide into the manufacture and sale of fake or substandard food, medicine or agricultural products between August and mid-October."

Beijing evidently wants the world to think it is serious about the problem. Of course, some people are sure to disagree. One of those is the blogger at Slobokan Dot Com. He laughs at the arrests and is unimpressed. I get the impression that he thinks 774 arrests isn't very many in a country like China. I personally was more impressed by the statistic that 200 illegal businesses dealing with food were closed in the last few months. Slobokan wants to know when the Chinese government is going to get around to protecting Americans. I guess I figure that a.) the Chinese think that quality control starts at home and b.) we have a government of our own who's supposed to do that.

As an aside, I found it interesting that Slobokan appears from the ads at his site to be a supporter of presidential candidate Fred...

Some of the crackdown arrests do actually help people outside China. One source points out that among the companies busted, some were marketing fake Viagra, fake Tamiflu (the anti-flu drug being stockpile in some western countries in case of a bird flu pandemic), and fake anti-malarial medications.