China Executes Former Food Safety Head
China executed the former head of its food and drug safety agency today for taking bribes and approving fake drugs. The International Herald Tribune reports that Zheng Xiaoyu's sentence was considered harsh even for China, which human rights groups say carries out more court-ordered executions than all other nations combined.
Zheng, the former director of the State Food and Drug Administration, is the first "ministerial-level official put to death since 2000 and only the fourth since China opened it doors to the outside world nearly 30 years ago," the newspaper reports.
During his tenure, Zheng's agency approved six medicines that turned out to be fakes. One of the drugs has been blamed for the deaths of 10 people, state media report. Zheng also was convicted of accepting more than $800,000 in gifts and cash while he ran the agency.
The Australian reports that the execution comes a few months before the Communist Party's five-yearly Congress, noting that party officials typically make a big show of battling corruption leading up to the "showpiece political event."
The execution has largely been portrayed as a sign from the government that it's serious about fixing the country's product safety problems. While NPR's Anthony Kuhn said on Morning Edition that Zheng was executed because "this is what it takes to placate public anger" in China, the action has raised some concerns outside the country. Pierre Legrand comments on his Pink Flamingo Bar blog that it has him wondering if he should buy any products from China at all.
What worries me is I am supporting a State that is so serious about [t]aking my money they will execute some functionary whose actions might cause the world to slow down its purchases of goods from China.
1:53 PM ET | 07-10-2007 | permalink
