Recently the Shijiazhuang municipal government publicly apologized for the Sanlu powdered milk incident. The city received a report from Sanlu at the beginning of August about the problem, but "did not entirely comprehend," "did not fully estimate the consequences," and "dealt with it inadequately." Once again, in order to protect local enterprise and control "negative influences," the city government allowed more than a month to go by without reporting it, causing the state of affairs to creep towards a stage where it could not be managed. The entire powdered milk crisis demonstrates that food safety is obviously the moral responsibility of the company and it is the government's duty to supervise. However, this incident also proves that when we cannot rely on local governments and enterprises, on whom can we rely? Why, when the cases of infant kidney stones appeared before August, did we not hear a single media report? Just think, if the Sanlu milk powder problem had been reported at the time it first appeared, would it still have caused so many infants to become sick and even die? Would the Shijiazhuang government still "not entirely comprehend" and "not fully estimate the consequences"? Would city leaders, because they "seriously affected the party's and the city's image," have lost their posts? Based on the reasons revealed by the city government spokesperson, there were no media reports about the problem because Sanlu "asked the city government to strengthen its control and coordination of the media," so the city government obviously complied. Because all over the country people did not realize the problem with powdered milk, finally today everyone has seen or experienced an episode of the problem themselves.
The Sanlu incident demonstrates that we cannot trust the companies and cannot necessarily trust local government. Under the premise of revenue being basically stable, enterprises will do anything possible to lower production costs. As long as it does not cause problems, like the powdered milk incident, which are serious and obviously harmful, or to say it more precisely, as long as such harm does not lead to extra costs, profit maximization by any method is the "rational choice" of enterprises. In the local government's point of view, a company like Sanlu – one of the top 500 Chinese companies – not only means local taxes but also represents the local "government achievement," bearing the image of the local government itself. Because of this, when its products had problems, the local government's first reaction was to help the company control the negative social effects, then hope they pass, managing themselves and reducing harmful effects, calming the situation and deceiving. Finally, the local government and companies get through the situation unscathed, to everyone's satisfaction. The problem is, because of a lack of media oversight, the general public knows nothing about this entire process, cannot do anything to guard against it, and therefore faces a huge health and security risk. One day, the local government fails to manage the crisis, delaying controlling it until the last moment, so that a local risk becomes a national disaster. In the end, for the local government and company's "image," they now have to pay the costs for consumers scattered across the entire country; in the powdered milk incident, this is first and foremost hundreds of thousands of kidney stones in infants.
Actually, the Shijiazhuang government does not need to excessively reproach itself, because from its perspective, after the Sanlu incident occurred, the measures taken within the government could not be called "inadequate." The government and Sanlu miscalculated, actually "not fully estimating the consequences." They did not realize that melamine would become such a big force all over the country, causing such a mortal disaster, even causing human casualties. If this had been known earlier, at the beginning, the information should not have been concealed and the media should not have been "managed and coordinated" by the government. However, in this case, the Shijiazhuang city government's comprehension is seemingly still lacking; the government should apologize to the entire country not for "dealing with it inadequately," and definitely not for "lacking political sensitivity," but for delaying reporting the incident. Furthermore, the government should not help companies by "controlling and coordinating" the media, leaving everyone in the dark and not realizing that they are bearing a huge security risk and harm.
As the general public, the thing we care about most is not that the powdered milk incident damaged some famous brands' business prospects or the careers of some of the people responsible. Instead, we care about the flaws that were exposed in the system that caused public harm and the lessons that can be drawn from the crisis. Since the government and companies certainly cannot always be trusted and since they even sometimes intentionally create falsehoods, have mistaken judgment, or supervision is not adequate, we cannot put our entire fate in their hands, and eventually pay the price for their various mistakes. A safe and secure society most have the ability to save itself, and the premise for saving oneself is information. May we ask if the public is entirely ignorant of safety risks, how can we protect ourselves against them? In fact, in terms of what the governments to do, this is easier – it just needs to guarantee the free flow of information. At the very least it cannot fail to bring to light public information that it has and cannot intentionally suppress important information relevant to public health and safety. In other words, the government, during this type of incident, can just let go and not manage, and the country will be better for it.
Of course, some people may ask, what if the information is not true? What if it damages the company's name? The answer is very simple: the constitution stipulates that China should be a country with the rule of law, so we can resolve this type of problem through legal means. If the media reports of melamine in Sanlu's powdered milk were proven in a courthouse to be simply untrue, and the rumors affected sales of Sanlu's powdered milk, then the media that reported the false stories would be responsible for paying for the company's economic losses. Just as Sanlu should pick up the tab for the kidney stones caused by its powdered milk. China's laws and courts specialize in resolving this type of problem; even if media reports are not entirely true, what do we have to fear?
Simple common sense says that media supervision will not unnecessarily disturb the government but will instead help the government and society together realize and resolve problems. Not only is the media the eyes and ears of society, helping the public to discover and avoid risk in a timely fashion, but it is also an informant for the government. Although high levels of government can go through internal channels to understand issues at lower levels, internal information will inevitably have limits. The higher the level, the farther away it is from the grassroots. Direct information from society is very limited, so higher levels must go through the media to hear from society. These past few years from the 2003 case of
Sun Zhigang to this year's
Weng'an mass incident, high levels of government learned of these public incidents through media reports in a timely manner and managed the national effects they produced. These reports produced "negative effects," reflecting local societies' inharmonious components, but at the same time, through the media exposing the inharmoniousness, our society has the possibility of moving towards harmony. On the contrary, if actions like the Shijiazhuang government's "managing and coordinating" of the media until hidden security problems become real crises occurs, how can we possibly realize harmony? After all, harmony is not just peace on the surface, it is internal peace and stability. If we want to observe the people's condition, resolve contradictions, and realize harmony, all of this cannot be removed from a responsible and pluralistic media.
The Sanlu powdered milk incident proves that food safety definitely requires administrative supervision and company guarantees, but even more, it requires oversight by the media.
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