Texts for Translation 2009:
  Quentin Sommerville

In a country as vast and heavily populated as China, small numbers
rarely make an impact.

Dozens can die, here or there, and it hardly pricks the national
conscience.

But it was six deaths last year - yes, only six - that that really
shook-up this country.

Six dead babies.

They died from kidney stones, and complications, after drinking
contaminated baby milk.

The milk contained melamine, a chemical used to make plastics and
fertilizer. It had been added by farmers and by staff at milking
stations, to thicken thin milk. It gives the illusion that the milk is
more nutrious, has higher protein levels. In high doses, melamine is
toxic.

Jiao Zi Zhou didn't make it to his first birthday. He died of kidney
failure on September the third last year. He'd spent about 16 days in
hospital, in terrible pain. His parents spent their life savings trying
to make their baby better. When the money ran out, they had to leave; so
they nursed him at home, where he died.

Cai Chong's parents fed him Sanlu baby milk from the day he was born. It
was a trusted brand - with a government seal of approval. The company
boasted of it's 1000 separate quality checks. But the milk was poisoning
him, and Chong died on July 16th, only six months old.

Sanlu had started receiving complaints about its milk in December the
previous year. By May it knew the milk it was selling was contaminated.
But it was only thanks to the intervention of its foreign partner - a
new Zealand company - that production was stopped. From May to August
Sanlu knowingly sold 900 tonnes of contaminated baby milk.

In all, almost 300,000 children became sick across the country.

Sanlu wasn't the only diary selling contaminated milk, some 22 companies
were routinely adding melamine. And they weren't the only ones
complicit. It's been alleged that the provincial governments knew about
the poisoning, but hushed it up - fearful of embarrassment as the
Olympics approached.

A number of government officials have resigned because of the scandal -
but not a single politician or health official is facing trial. Nor are
any executives from diary companies other than Sanlu.

The media were also complicit. Customer concerns were deleted from
internet sites that took advertising from the diary companies. The state
broadcaster CCTV shamefully spent half an hour of primetime television,
reassuring parents of the safety of Sanlu's products.

Farming here is mostly small scale, Sanlu and other diaries collected
milk from a multitude of small farms.

Not far from the company's headquarters in Shijiazhuang, in Hebei
province, Huo Hongxi keeps just over a dozen cows. He's been farming for
about seven years. I sat with him in two small rooms he lives in, beside
the cow pen. An army blanket over the door kept out the bitter chill. As
his wife cut us some sweet winter apples, he explained why the chemicals
were added.

"In the summer we milk the cows three times a day instead of two, but
they drink a lot of water then, so protein content didn't meet company
standards". But when melamine was added, it did.

A handsome man, his cheeks reddened by the cold work outside, there's a
cynical glint in his eye. On the wall behind him a calendar from a
chemical feed company, president Hu Jintao's face beaming down from the
cover.

Hong xi said, they'd been given lessons in animal husbandry, but didn't
have the money or equipment to meet the standards.

"They told us to feed cows with warm water," he said, as the wind howled
outside. But there are so many cows, where in the world can we find so
much warm water for them?"

In fact, Sanlu rarely visited his cows. Government inspectors were
seldom seen.

The melamine scandal is shocking enough, but what makes it worse, is
that it is only four years have passed in since China's last baby milk
scandal.

Then, children were being fed fake milk powder than had no nutritional
value. At least 13 babies died of malnutrition. Their swollen cheeks and
bellies disguising the fact that they were starving to death.

Then, as now, the government promised to make milk safe - that this
would never happen again. China's prime minister Wen Jiaobao has
apologized for the latest scandal. Hu Jintao, the president, visited
diary farmers in Anhui province, wagging his finger, he ordered them to
serve the people better.

The might have felt entitled to say the same to him.

Yet again his government has failed in the most basic of duties -
ensuring the safety of its people. This is a country of weak regulation,
little respect for the rule of law, and almost no openness or public
accountability. Add in local corruption and you have real a toxic brew.

So Chinese citizens are left fearful and have little faith in the food,
the drink, and the medicines they buy. But what alternative do they
have?

As I left Huo Hongxi, and the other farmers, they gave me two bags of
thick, creamy, fresh milk. The next day I warmed it for breakfast, and
like millions of others here, hoped for the best.

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