Toxic China: Eat Food, and Die!

Rotten peaches pickled in outdoor pools surrounded by garbage are spiked with sodium metabisulfite to keep the fruit looking fresh and with bleaching agents and additives harmful to the human liver and kidneys. The peaches are packed in uncleaned bags that previously held animal feed and then shipped off to big-brands stores. _NYT

In China, there are two sorts of food supply: One for the elite, and one for everyone else.

...the State General Administration of Sports forbids its athletes from consuming meat outside of official training facilities. As far back as 2008, the government started setting up Special Food Supply Centers to make sure the elite eats organic....

Toxic preserved fruit is the latest item on China’s expanding list of unsafe food products. Baby formula adulterated with melamine is the best known, but there is also meat containing the banned steroid clenbuterol, rice contaminated with cadmium, noodles flavored with ink and paraffin, mushrooms treated with fluorescent bleach and cooking oil recycled from street gutters. A 2011 study published in the Chinese Journal of Food Hygiene estimated that more than 94 million people in China become ill each year from bacterial food-borne diseases, leading to about 8,500 deaths annually.

... _NYT

Chinese officials are routinely bribed to allow defective products to pass inspection. This is not only true for the food industry, but for pharmaceuticals, construction materials, and for all manner of products where public safety is at risk.

This ongoing crisis of public morality reveals more about China than any amount of official government economic statistics.

Read between the lines. That is often where the truth resides.

China's Ticking Time Bomb to Widespread Unrest

China has many serious problems threatening its future prosperity and strength. Among them are a virtual absence of social benefits for migrant workers, and dangerous exposure to toxic materials of all kinds for both workers and ordinary citizens. The article excerpted below discusses two of these many problems:

The root of the problem is China's hukou system of household registration. Migrant workers aren't considered residents of the cities where they live, which means they aren't entitled to health care, pensions, housing subsidies or education for their children. To educate their children, migrant workers either have to find the money to pay for schooling in the cities where they work or send their children back to the rural areas where they officially still live. With migrant workers earning so little -- the average is about $250 a month -- sending children back home is often the only option.

The hukou system is nothing new, so why the increase in protests now? Three reasons, I think. First, the contrast between the country's newly wealthy and this vast migrant underclass has fed anger at the unfairness of the system. Second, because China's growth has produced labor shortages in many parts of eastern, export-oriented China and because Beijing has pushed growth into lagging western provinces, migrant workers have more bargaining power. They can find work closer to home if they don't like the way they're treated in the traditional fast-growth provinces. Third, China's increasing inflation rate has come down particularly hard on the country's poorest residents. The annual overall inflation rate was 5.5% in May, but food inflation is running at well over 10% annually. If you make just $250 a month -- and remember that's the average, so some migrant workers make even less -- and spend 35% of your family budget on food, then 10% food inflation is pinning you to the wall....

...China is the world's largest consumer of lead. National data are sketchy, but a 2006 review of the existing data suggests that one-third of Chinese children suffer from elevated blood-lead levels. Part of the problem is enforcement -- officials are reluctant to clamp down on businesses that provide jobs. But national environmental standards are also woefully inadequate. Based on U.S. regulations, lead levels of 40 micrograms per deciliter of blood are poisonous for adults. Chinese rules call 400 micrograms per deciliter, a common reading for lead workers, "moderately elevated."

Tightening and enforcing national standards would require closing marginal factories, mandating expensive environmental upgrades for every company that works with lead -- including the country's increasingly large battery industry -- and providing compensation and treatment to affected workers. All that would disrupt local economies and be incredibly expensive. It's easier to treat each outbreak of the national problem as a local event and address it with force and limited payments. _money.msn

Chronic lead toxicity among workers, children, and ordinary citizens is destructive enough. But even worse poisons and poisonings afflict various parts of the Chinese population. And authorities appear extremely hesitant to do anything about them, for fear of upsetting the current run of prosperity in high places.

China's leaders are deluding themselves if they think they can keep China within a bubble of their own making and under their complete control. People and ideas cross freely over the Chinese border on a daily basis, and each person and idea represents a potential threat to the autocratic system of the CCP. But stopping the relative free flow of ideas and people would mean going back to the dismal age of Mao and the cultural revolution of death and fanatical ideology out of control.

The situation is intrinsically unstable. Sooner or later, something has to give.

The Ghost Country that Poisons the World

Prevailing winds across the Pacific are pushing thousands of tons of other contaminants—including mercury, sulfates, ozone, black carbon, and desert dust—over the ocean each year. Some of this atmospheric junk settles into the cold waters of the North Pacific, but much of it eventually merges with the global air pollution pool that circumnavigates the planet. _Discover

China's growth is nothing more than a credit bubble on steroids. Cities are vacant, yet China keeps building, and building and building. _Mish_Globaleconomicanalysis

China and Environs
The amount of toxins that China dumps into its water, soil, and air, is astounding. If China were only poisoning herself -- in the frantic attempt to over-build its ghost infrastructure to nowhere -- the rest of the world could only look on in horror. But since the effects of Ghost China's poisonous activity oozes out to affect many other nations, we need to take a closer look.

These contaminants are implicated in a long list of health problems, including neurodegenerative disease, cancer, emphysema, and perhaps even pandemics like avian flu. And when wind and weather conditions are right, they reach North America within days. Dust, ozone, and carbon can accumulate in valleys and basins, and mercury can be pulled to earth through atmospheric sinks that deposit it across large swaths of land.

...China in particular stands out because of its sudden role as the world’s factory, its enormous population, and the mass migration of that population to urban centers; 350 million people, equivalent to the entire U.S. population, will be moving to its cities over the next 10 years. China now emits more mercury than the United States, India, and Europe combined. “What’s different about China is the scale and speed of pollution and environmental degradation,” Turner says. “It’s like nothing the world has ever seen.”

Development there is racing far ahead of environmental regulation. “Standards in the United States have gotten tighter because we’ve learned that ever-lower levels of air pollution affect health, especially in babies and the elderly,” Jaffe says. As pollutants coming from Asia increase, though, it becomes harder to meet the stricter standards that our new laws impose.

...China’s smog-filled cities are ringed with heavy industry, metal smelters, and coal-fired power plants, all crucial to that fast-growing economy even as they spew tons of carbon, metals, gases, and soot into the air. _Much more at Discover

While China is certainly spewing more than its share of CO2, we should be much more concerned about the real pollutants gushing from China's over-revved production machine. Corrupt government officials are routinely bribed to look the other way. China's people suffer, but so do others who live farther from the source.

Why does a nation full of ghost cities, shopping malls, highways, and skyscrapers continue to push all-out for ever greater construction and production? It is likely that China's export markets will continue to shrink over time -- unless the US jettisons the Obama regime and re-institutes the rules of opportunity which made the US economy the driver of world prosperity.

The true state of affairs is China's banks are insolvent. China is building units for which there is little demand and few can afford. China will have to print money to pay for all of this malinvestment. The idea the Yuan is undervalued fails to take into consideration any of this. _Mish

The overbuilding of a toxic infrastructure by Ghost China. Just one of many important problems which the middle kingdom is thrusting upon the rest of the world.

More on China's ghost cities (via Mish)

Economic Boom China 2009: The Dark Side

The international media has been following reports of record commodity imports by China. The surge is being portrayed as reflecting China's recovering economy. Indeed, the international financial market is portraying China's perceived recovery as a harbinger for global recovery. It is a major factor pushing up stock prices around the world.

But China's imports are mostly for speculative inventories. Bank loans were so cheap and easy to get that many commodity distributors used financing for speculation. The first wave of purchases was to arbitrage the difference between spot and futures prices. That was smart. But now that price curves have flattened for most commodities, these imports are based on speculation that prices will increase. Demand from China's army of speculators is driving up prices, making their expectations self-fulfilling in the short term. _Caijing.com_via_FabiusMaximus

Large numbers of investors and financial analysts have pinned their hopes for the global economy on China's back. The most polluting nation on Earth, one of the most dictatorial and most corrupt nations on the planet is being held up as the future of the planetary economic system.

But China's cheery economic numbers may be hiding a darker set of realities behind the bamboo curtain. Here is one critical look at China's economic situation that is worth a read. The Chinese economy may be in the middle of a huge financial bubble of its own.

China has been buying up commodities worldwide at a frantic pace -- trying to take advantage of bargain basement prices brought on by low global demand. This Chinese commodities "rally" has inflated the Baltic Dry Index and China's economic figures, but it may be on the verge of fizzling.

The emerging problem of toxic Chinese drywall sales to North America is likely to once again raise the issue of the Chinese Poison Train. Toxic products flowing out of Chinese enterprises into world marketplaces should have had a far worse impact on Chinese exports than they have done. Poor quality steel from Chinese foundries is another problem likely to come back to bite the dragon's tail.

The problem of excessive Chinese regulations and limitations on entry into the marketplace continue to give corrupt and inefficient State Owned Enterprises in China an unfair advantage over private enterprise. This corrupt inefficiency shows no sign of going away anytime soon.

The gullibility of those who take Chinese economic figures at face value is difficult to explain, outside of wishful thinking. Everyone is looking for the big score, and right now China seems to be the biggest score around. Wait and see.

Based on an article from Abu Al Fin

Update: News stories here and here illustrate the uncertainty and volatility within world markets.

It is unlikely that the Obama crew has more ideas than to "inject more liquidity". Like the "mechanic" whose answer to every car problem is to add a quart of oil to the engine. You must have had some reason to vote for him, America.

Geopolitical Miscellany

China's central bank, The People's Bank of China, is warning that the country's economic recovery is not yet on a solid foundation.

Meanwhile, China continues to poison the world through contamination of the atmospheres and the oceans.

Russia's corrupt state-run energy company Gazprom is being forced to raise domestic energy rates. The Russian people are already unhappy over their economic nightmare, and may not take kindly to these rate hikes.

Hugo Chavez is back to his old tricks of stealing private assets to finance his failing revolution in Venezuela. No doubt you will pay "fair market value" for these private assets, at least as you see it -- eh, Hugo, mi amigo?

China Drought, Pollution, Mismanagement Points to High Grain Prices Later This Year

outright shortages of water are exacerbated by water pollution, which leaves many of its rivers unfit for irrigation. _javno

China's industrial policies have devastated water resources and former farmland for decades. On top of all that, low seasonal rainfall threatens China's grain crop, already reduced by unchecked blight. Expect higher grain prices on commodities markets later this year as a result. Also, expect the "pundits" of the world to blame biofuels.

About 158 million mu (10 million hectares) of wheat crop have been damaged or destroyed by the country’s worst drought in half a century, according to official figures. Last week, the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) announced that the Puccinia striiformis fungus, which is commonly known as stripe rust, had spread to 753,00 hectares of wheat, a 40% increase over last year’s outbreak. The MOA expects the prevailing dry climate to accelerate the spread of the fungus.

Rainfall this week has alleviated parts of drought-stricken provinces to some extent, with more rain forecast next week. Official data from China’s Office of State Flood Control and Drought Relief estimates that as of 6 February, the drought had left more than 4.5 million people and 2.5 million livestock short of adequate drinking water.

More than two-thirds of China’s cities as well as 200 million rural residents already suffer water shortages. _GCC

China is a country full of intelligent and hard working people. It is their misfortune to be living under the CCP government, which in its single-minded obsession with power and regional hegemony has devastated the Chinese land, air, and water resources.

So Clever: How Do They Get Melamine Into Eggs

Almost 50,000 Chinese infants were hospitalized for melamine toxicity from infant milk products. Now, eggs are being pulled from supermarkets across China, and Chinese fisheries are being inspected for possible melamine contamination.

It seems that besides being added to dairy products, melamine has also been added to animal feed.

The practice of mixing melamine into animal feed is an "open secret" in the industry, the Nanfang Daily reported Thursday, describing a process of repackaging melamine scrap into an inexpensive product called "protein powder," which is then sold to feed suppliers.

...Four brands of Chinese eggs have been found to be contaminated with melamine this past week, and agriculture officials speculated that the cause was adulterated feed given to hens. No illnesses have been linked to melamine in eggs.

...Chemical plants used to pay companies to treat and dispose of melamine scrap, but about five years ago began selling it to manufacturers who repackaged it as "protein powder," the Nanfang Daily reported, citing an unidentified chemical industry expert.

The inexpensive powder was first used to give the impression of higher protein levels in aquatic feed, then later in feed for livestock and poultry, the report said. _AP

Many consumers are unaware that most processed food contains a wide range of ingredients, many of which may come from low-priced Chinese wholesalers of food concentrates. As the dragnet for melamine widens it is quite likely that some widely consumed western brands contain the contaminant via "no-name" low cost ingredients from Chinese distributors. Fortunately, most of these western brands are unlikely to contain the high concentrations of the contaminant that were present in Chinese baby formulas.

Babies Are Being Poisoned in China

The Chinese Poison Train continues to roll down its toxic tracks. It is the smallest citizens that are paying the price in the latest scandal.

more than 6,000 babies had fallen ill and three died after drinking milk powder contaminated with a toxic chemical, as it vowed massive efforts to contain a widening food scandal.

In the latest debacle to tarnish the "Made in China" label, authorities admitted two of 22 companies found to have melamine in their milk powder were exporting abroad, and that tainted yogurt had been found in Hong Kong.

Melamine, a chemical normally used to make plastics and glues, appeared to have been added to make the products seem richer in protein, and China's two biggest dairy companies were among those found to have contaminated products.

"Everyone in our family is very worried," said Qi Yunzhong, a teacher at a primary school in northwest China's Gansu province whose son got kidney stones after drinking tainted milk powder.

"Every day there is a long line out in front of the hospital. The families are worried and everyone has stopped using milk powder," he told AFP by phone.

In Beijing, Health Minister Chen Zhu said 6,244 infants across the country had fallen ill and three died after consuming the milk powder over a period of many months.

The number of sick was up fivefold from official numbers given Tuesday. _SinoDaily

Apparently melamine was added to the products intentionally, to deceive nutritional testers into thinking the dairy products were higher in nutrition than they were. It is sometimes easy to forget that China is still a developing nation, without many of the safeguards that more developed nations have.

A scandal that strikes at the most innocent of Chinese is most dangerous in terms of inciting disaffection among the part of the population with children, or considering having children. China is particularly susceptible to rolling waves of dissent, due to the firm pressure on all unfavourable news kept on the media by the CCP propaganda ministry.

China Wins Gold Medal in Poisoning Competition

This time, scores of Japanese were poisoned by Chinese dumplings in what may be an intentional poisoning.

The Chinese regime officially admitted for the first time the Chinese exported dumplings that has sicken many Japanese could have been deliberately poisoned inside the factory in China, according to Japan Broadcasting Corp (NHK) report on August 30....This January, the frozen dumplings from China’s Tian Yang Food Corp sickened dozens in Japan. Lab testing showed those dumplings contained traces of pesticide contamination. _Epoch

The latest China poisoning event joins a long list of other poisonings from China that have been labeled "the chinese poison train." It is the Chinese people themselves who suffer the most from unenforced standards within China, and if not for the poisoned products that are inadvertently exported, the outside world would know little of the problem.

Sadly for the Chinese people, the environment within China is growing so toxic that the poisons are beginning to taint habitats of humans and wildlife alike. And sadly for people outside China, the corrupt country's environmental toxins are spilling out to pollute large portions of the world at large. It is difficult to celebrate China's amazing (although certainly exaggerated in real terms) economic growth when such a huge price is being paid by the ordinary people of China and the world.

China: The Many Hazards of Growing Too Fast--Poisoning the World

China's economic growth rate has been amazing. Combining the capitalist ethic with the world's oldest, largest, and most entrepreneurial culture has yielded huge financial dividends. But at what cost?

Clothing and fabrics from China contain levels of formaldehyde 500 times greater than is safe.

Toys made in China contain lead and other poisons that are particularly dangerous to children.

Fertilizers from China contain high levels of lead, arsenic, and cadmium, which enter the crops--making the food poisonous.

Food imports from China contain pathologic bacteria, pesticides, and cancer-causing chemicals.

Check out this long but only partial look at the Chinese Poison Train.

China is too corrupt to have meaningful controls over its exports. It is a third world government and infrastructure that is flush with cash and other forms of wealth. Greedy government officials accept payoffs on toxic exports, shoddy construction, unsafe mining and industrial practises, and ineffectual environmental protections for China's air and water.

China is attempting to build a modern military to challenge the US, at least in Asia and the Asian side of the Pacific. But it is likely that China's military is run as shoddily as China's financial and industrial base. All of this suggests that caution is necessary when projecting China's future, or when contemplating financial or other partnerships with China.