Corruption Lottery Continues

The problems continue at the Food and Drug Administration. Cao Wenzhuang, the former director of drug registration approvals, was recently sentenced to death for accepting $300,000 in bribes from pharmecutical companies to approve fake drugs. The expectation is that his sentence will be commuted to life in prison.

The Times suggests that "[T]he death sentences appear to be a strong signal that China is determined to crack down on rampant fraud, corruption and counterfeiting in the nation’s food and drug industries." I am told by local Chinese that this is more a function of cleaning house of political enemies than cleaning house at the FDA. International embarrassment is a convenient excuse, but if these folks were close friends of President Hu, they might be reassigned to a less lucrative post or left alone entirely.

The simple fact is that this type of corruption is systemic - it exists throughout the Chinese bureaucracy from the banking industry to the real estate industry to customs to local governments. We'll see if these actions signal changes. Perhaps the international reaction to the discovery of melamine-tainted wheat glutin in dog food, diethylene glycol in toothpaste and nitrofuran, malachite green, gentian violet and fluoroquinolones in fish coming from China has caused a change in heart and strategy for the Chinese government. For the Chinese citizens and for the expats living here, I hope so.