A crisis made worse

The whole world was impressed by the marvellous Olympics, an extraordinary "coming out" party for China as it seeks its rightful place in the international community. But evidence is increasing that the country's obsession with the Games led it to take its attention off other, equally important, issues - including food safety.

In an attempt to ensure that the media would be suffused with good news, the Communist Party's propaganda department put out a directive to the nation's media in the months leading up to the Olympics. The eighth point said: "All food safety issues, such as cancer-causing mineral water, are off limits."

So, the success of the Olympics was given priority over the health of the Chinese people. And, in the weeks and months leading up to the Games, the government's attention was narrowly focused on such things as the Olympic torch relay.

The Australian newspaper reported on Saturday on comments by Chinese blogger Wu Qing - the daughter of Sanlu Group executive chairwoman Tian Wenhua , who has been sacked and arrested. She wrote that her mother had reported the milk contamination to the government of Shijiazhuang , where Sanlu has its headquarters. But, Ms Wu wrote, it was at the time when the Olympic torch was arriving in the city, and the government did not respond "because it wanted to ensure that, in its own words, the torch came first, nothing else mattered".

Ms Wu is no impartial observer but it is a fact that Sanlu did, belatedly, report the contamination to the local government, which did not take action for over a month. It appears entirely possible that this was a result of Olympic fever.

Vice-governor Yang Chongyong of Hebei province - whose capital is Shijiazhuang - has acknowledged that Sanlu, a highly respected company that is the official supplier of milk powder to Chinese astronauts, sent a report to the municipal government on August 2, six days before the opening of the Games. However, the Shijiazhuang government did not pass it up the chain of command.

Since the scandal came to light, Beijing has been asked if Olympic athletes were also exposed to contaminated dairy products. Li Changjiang , who has just resigned as head of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, responded: "All products supplied to the Olympics and Paralympics were secure. We applied special scanning management procedures for all Olympic products. All stages of food product supplies - including milk products - were step-by-step strictly monitored by us, with no loopholes in the process."

Senior Chinese officials, too, received special food. An organisation called the State Council Party and State Organisations Special Food Supply Centre, formed in 2004, sees to it that senior party and state officials receive specially monitored food supplies.

Thus, it appears, only the masses were exposed to poisonous milk - vulnerable people who rely on the government to protect them. Authorities say at least four babies have died and more than 52,000 have fallen ill.

Beijing is so sensitive to any hint that the Olympics was responsible for the tainted milk scandal that internet postings about the issue have been deleted almost immediately.

The tainted milk remained on store shelves for as long as it did because Beijing took no action. And it took no action because, it explains, the chain of command broke down, with lower levels of government not reporting to higher levels.

But there is a simple solution: use the media. If it had been free to report bad news, central government officials would have read or heard about the scandal earlier.

By neutering the media, Beijing is emasculating its most potent ally in the fight against crime, corruption and government incompetence. Let's hope that the babies who died and the many thousands who remain sick will finally teach the government a lesson: the free media is your friend, not your enemy.

Discussion question:

It is said that the Chinese government put too much emphasis on the Olympics and this led to the problem of tainted milk indirectly. Do you think so?