"And it's (almost) the same the whole world over"

Well, not exactly the same but if you are unfortunate enough to be born into a political prison then it is worse than your most frightening nightmare!  I mentioned in the post below that South Africa has ignored the wisdom of Nelson Mandela and is busy slamming the jail door shut on themselves but over in China I really don't think they have ever had so much as a whiff of freedom.  Thanks to Cindy Yu at The Coffee House, we can now read about the latest inhumane cruelty to be inflicted on the children of China by their own government machine:

The word changsheng means ‘long life’. But Gao Junfang’s Changsheng Biotech has long been in the business of robbing its victims of just that. Since taking over the company in the nineties, Gao oversaw the privatisation of the state-owned big pharma and turned it into her personal dynasty. She secured majority shares and planted her husband, her children, and their partners into the meatiest roles in the company. For decades, Gao was the entrepreneurial poster child – from rags (sort of) to riches, a walking example of the possibilities of China’s economic growth, and an idol especially for women.

But last month, Gao was arrested along with 17 other people in the company. As of 2017, Changsheng had sold 250,000 fake DPT vaccines. In China, as in Britain, these jabs are used to immunise babies against diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus. Though the fake three-in-one vaccines didn’t produce any adverse effects, their recipients were not actually immunised; all three diseases are potentially fatal. Needless to say, it was a recipe for disaster. The authorities imposed a fine and ordered Changsheng to stop productions.

None of this information was passed onto the public, let alone their children who thought they had been safeguarded.  But there was more to come:

This time, a whistle-blower revealed that Changsheng had been falling into old habits and making dodgy rabies vaccines. It had been mixing expired vaccines into new mixtures, and fabricating production dates and batch numbers. As well as the moral depravity of Gao and her team, it’s clear that the government – at some level – turned a blind eye to the company’s malpractice.

This company, Changsheng, has a history of bribery and corruption amongst government officials going back 20 years!  Yes, we suffer similar problems here in the democratic west but in the end "truth will out" and a massive and public rectification occurs.  But if you are an impoverished Chinese worker with a sick child the very last thing you should do is complain to the government.  You might think that things are bad but such a complaint will bring down the wrath of a governmental machine that will crush you and yours.

So next time you read or hear a moan and a groan about Mrs. May or President Trump, just pause and thank God you do not live in China!

 

 

Comments

[Whyaxye]

Odd place. The worst excesses of communism, and then the worst excesses of capitalism. It might be that under communism, a country forgets how to do capitalism properly, or at least with some ethical dimension. The gangster kleptocracy in Russia seems to be an example of this.

In addition, though, there seems to be another, non-economic aspect here. A country has either got a culture of trust and decency which breeds a preponderance of reasonably moral citizens, or it hasn't. I would say that up until about 20 or 30 years ago, most of the Anglosphere had that culture. I doubt if China ever had.

[Whitewall]

W, good point about 'high trust'societies. The West still has enough but like you say, not what it was. If China or any communist country had any trust, a massive standing army or secret police would not be needed. Capitalism, which means freedom, is not very likely to flourish under this kind of weight.