Is government the only one to blame for food scandals?
- By Du Jianguo
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China.org.cn, July 2, 2011
Since the beginning of this year, food safety has become a hot topic.
Problems with food safety are impossible to avoid in a market economy. The market is not abstract – its construction and operation depend on the participation of specific enterprises, whose raison d'etre is the pursuit of profit. In order to lower costs, increase profit and strengthen competitiveness, enterprises take "black" and "white" measures: "white" measures include adopting new technologies, increasing productivity, etc., whereas "black" measures include skimping on materials and labor, and selling inferior or fake products. In this context, it is hard to avoid food scandals.
Brick kilns employ slaves with mental disabilities; paper mills surreptitiously pollute; Wall Street sells subprime mortgages; East Power takes risks with nuclear safety – all these phenomena follow the same logic as food scandals. It could be said that, as long as there is market competition, as long as enterprises pursue profit, food scandals will continue to emerge, "like weeds after a prairie fire." This problem is not limited to China – it also exists in Western countries.
In the face of food scandals and market failures, if the mainstream Chinese news media and academia were to take a responsible attitude toward their audience, they would undertake some critical self-reflection. As is well known, over the past two decades, the Chinese media and academia have been among the world's most laudatory about "the market." "The invisible hand," "small government, big market" (or "small government, big society"), "the government that governs least governs best," "the pursuit of profit is the pursuit of justice," etc. – such slogans are ever-present on the lips of Chinese journalists and academics, who believe the market to be the epitome of efficiency, fairness and morality.
Unfortunately, when the market has problems, journalists and academics not only fail to question themselves; they act as if these problems are unrelated to the market, instead placing the blame squarely on the government. The vast majority of news reports imply that lack of government supervision is the main reason for the worsening of food safety. Such an approach is highly problematic.
First of all, consumers, the public, are qualified to criticize the government, but the media is not necessarily qualified. Weren't you demanding that the government retreat from the market only yesterday? Now that problems have emerged, how can you turn around and blame the government for failure to supervise the market? What is that you prescribe, after all – laissez faire or intervention? Hayek or Keynes? Such inconsistency contradicts the principle that journalists should be objective and fair.
Secondly, regarding food safety, of course it is necessary to keep an eye out for government negligence, but attention should also be paid to enterprises, which are, after all, the source of problems with food safety. Setting aside the question of who is the main or initial culprit, we must at least acknowledge that enterprises bear some of the responsibility. If journalists are to be fair, they must be impartial – they cannot always be "Marxist" toward the government and "liberal" toward enterprises.
