COMMENT Earthly troubles cloud China's space walk
By Kent Ewing
HONG KONG - Which China are we supposed to believe in?
The world watched in admiration for 17 days this summer as the country staged
arguably the most successful Olympic Games ever; certainly the opening ceremony
set a new artful standard in organizational precision and stylistic beauty. And
that Olympic triumph has been followed by another bold splash in international
headlines - the first ever space walk by a Chinese astronaut on Saturday and
the flawless return to Earth on Sunday of China's third manned spacecraft -
Shenzhou VII.
China became only the third nation, behind the former Soviet Union and the
United States, to stage a space walk and is also busy making plans for a space
station and a moon landing. The space walk received live television coverage,
and the man who
performed the feat, Colonel Zhai Zhigang, radioed these calming words to
President Hu Jintao and the Chinese people once he had finished his mission:
"The space-walk mission has been accomplished smoothly. Please set your mind at
ease, chairman Hu and the people of China. In the vastness of space, I felt
proud of our motherland."
The president and the nation then breathed a huge sigh of relief. Pride and
patriotism broke out all over again as China once more stirred awe and wonder
around the world.
Indeed, the stunning spectacle of a Chinese astronaut wearing a US$4.4 million
Chinese-made extra vehicular activity (EVA) space suit and waving the national
flag in space made it easy to forget that awe and wonder are not the norm in
the country these days; greed and corruption can claim that mantle.
How else to explain the tainted-milk crisis that has so far killed four
children and left 53,000 ill while once again sounding international alarm
bells over the safety of the Made in China label? Zhai's Feitian ("flying
in the sky") space suit, which is so intricate that it took nearly 15 hours for
the 42-year-old former fighter pilot just to put it on, is truly an awesome
creation, but otherwise the reputation of Chinese products - with the milk
scandal serving just as the latest example - is taking a beating on the world
market.
And then there are the ongoing human catastrophes in China's mining industry.
The tragic mudslides that occurred this month at an illegal iron-ore mine in
northern Shanxi province, killing 267 people, is just the latest in a long
string of disasters, most of which involve the notoriously dangerous coal
mines.
As a new wave of patriotism breaks over the nation following Shenzhou VII's
three days in outer space, let us also not forget the thousands of school
children who died in southwestern Sichuan province last May, crushed to death
by the magnitude-8 earthquake that destroyed their shoddily constructed schools
while they were innocently sitting and learning in them. Important government
and commercial buildings stood up to the massive quake in Sichuan, but many
schools collapsed as if made of tofu.
Still-grieving and angry parents continue their demands for justice and
compensation. And local officials stand accused of cheating on construction
materials for schools so that they could line their pockets with the money they
siphoned off.
How can an Olympic host nation that will soon plant its flag on the Moon serve
so many of its 1.3 billion people so poorly? It is a fair question to ask, and
one that the Chinese leadership must answer once all the hoopla over its
Olympic success - which included topping the gold-medals table with 51 - and
subsequent space travel has subsided.
It is not as if the Chinese government is incapable of assuring that food and
other products are safe, that its mines are not death traps for those who work
in them and that its schools do not collapse on the students who study in them.
This is not a question of resources or competence. It is a matter of political
will.
Beijing constructed the iconic Olympic architecture of the "Bird’s Nest" and
the "Water Cube", stymied would-be terrorists who wanted to disrupt the Summer
Games, dramatically decreased pollution in the capital and changed everything
from traffic patterns to the weather to guarantee a successful Olympics.
Surely, the leadership can also make sure that the milk Chinese children drink
is not laced with melamine, the industrial chemical at the center of the
tainted-milk scandal, and that dairy products the country exports to the rest
of the world are not similarly tainted.
The scandal has exposed as common practice in China's US$19 billion dairy
industry the adulteration of substandard milk with melamine - which can cause
kidney stones and ultimately lead to renal failure and death - to boost its
protein reading in the testing process. All of the country's big dairy
companies are involved, and it is clear that wholesale reform of the industry
is necessary.
Once the scandal broke this month, the central government's response was both
forceful and immediate. Product safety chief Li Changjiang resigned, milk
inspections are now taking place all over the country and executive heads are
rolling in the dairy industry. In addition, local officials who ignored or
covered up the problem are getting sacked.
Premier Wen Jiabao, who was such an inspirational presence in Sichuan in the
aftermath of the earthquake, recently apologized for the milk tragedy and
pledged to clean up the industry. It is not encouraging, however, that the $1.1
billion and 300,000 inspectors that the premier authorized last year to improve
safety regulations for food, drugs and other products failed to prevent the
current crisis.
Big questions remain about the central government's ability to create an
efficient and transparent regulatory system that would rein in both greedy
profiteers and corrupt Communist Party officials at the local and provincial
levels.
What Wen and Hu also need to pledge, then, is radical reform of the party, in
which there is a deeply embedded culture of corruption that encourages local
officials to collude with unscrupulous members of the business community and to
hide their mistakes - no matter how big - from their bosses.
In the tainted-milk scandal, for example, New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra -
43% owner of Sanlu Group, one of the guilty Chinese milk producers - belatedly
blew the whistle, prompting Prime Minister Helen Clark to intervene with
Beijing earlier this month. But reports now show that children had been falling
ill since last December. And it is certainly tempting to speculate how much
China's big Olympic coming-out party weighed on officials' minds as they
continued to bury news of stricken children, whose numbers continue to rise.
In the latest - and perhaps most painfully symbolic - embarrassment related to
the milk scandal, the maker of White Rabbit, the country's most internationally
renowned brand of candy, has halted all sales after melamine was found in the
sweet in Singapore. White Rabbit, historians will point out, was proudly
offered by premier Zhou Enlai to US president Richard Nixon during Nixon's
ice-breaking 1972 visit to China.
Tellingly, however, Shanghai Guan Sheng Yuan Food, Ltd has refused to recall
the candy until further tests are completed.
With so much to worry about on the ground, no wonder most Chinese were watching
the sky this weekend. China's space missions may be dismissed as no big deal in
Russia and America, whose astronauts started all this more than 40 years ago,
but that does not change the fact that the Chinese presence in space is yet
another bold announcement of the country's arrival on the world stage.
As demonstrated by Shenzhou VII and earlier missions, China's space program is
first-rate. All three missions have been successful, and the three Shenzhou VII
astronauts - Zhai and his partners in space, Liu Boming and Jing Haipeng - flew
in relative luxury, enjoying an on-board toilet, spicy food to suit their
tastes and Chinese medicine to combat space-motion sickness.
Contrast the supreme confidence of Chen Shanguang, director of the China
Astronaut Center, with the chaos in the country's dairy industry right now.
"The entire manned program is about quality," Chen told CCTV. "From astronaut
training to space suits and spacecraft, we must have zero flaws. It is not a
goal. It is the starting line."
The space story in China is playing out in much the same way it did in the US
in the 1960s, as chronicled in Tom Wolfe's famous book, The Right Stuff.
Zhai, Liu and Jing are 42-year-old fighter pilots from humble backgrounds, and
the three astronauts are being celebrated as national heroes who symbolize the
country's rise as a world power.
China's astronauts have proven that they have the right stuff. Now it is time
for the country's leaders to do the same.
Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at
kewing@hkis.edu.hk.
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