A worker sews prototype toys in a factory in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen.

Chinese officials admit they have failed to properly protect the public following a spate of health scares involving tainted food and medicines. As a consequence, many Western consumers now prefer to purchase so-called “China Free“ products that haven’t been manufactured by Chinese producers.
Over recent months, these scares have involved toothpaste, pet food ingredients, a leukaemia drug and a seemingly endless list of other products. China fears this issue could lead to social unrest at home from disgruntled consumers, and could tarnish its international reputation.
It is now promising to tighten supervision of the food and medicine industries.
At a press conference on Tuesday, Chinese officials made it clear the country has not done enough to protect consumers.
“China’s current food and drug safety situation is not very satisfactory,“ read a statement issued at the event, held to detail China’s plans to improve that situation.
It went on to say that sorting out this problem will not be easy because China is a developing country that does not have a long history of quality control.

Impact
Figures released by the government hint at just how difficult it will be to ensure products consumed at home and abroad are safe.
In the first six months of this year alone, the government uncovered 34,400 separate cases involving the production or sale of sub-standard food products.
Despite the difficulties, China realizes it must tackle the problem, not least to protect the reputation of its exports.
A few days ago, Sun Xianze, an official with the State Food and Drug Administration, told BBC: “The food problems have damaged our national credibility and image.“
Health scares could also have an effect closer to home, as Mr. Sun acknowledged.
“Food safety accidents and individual cases will not only affect the healthy development of the industry, but could also impact local economies and social stability,“ he said.
This is particularly true now, a time when Chinese people are more aware of their rights and less willing to put up with shoddy standards. China’s determination to get tough is perhaps reflected in the execution of the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu, for taking bribes.
A harsh sentence shows the government is serious about regaining public trust on this issue.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang admitted as much at a regular press briefing last Tuesday following the execution.

Poor Population
But establishing an effective supervision mechanism will not be easy, as was revealed at a press conference to outline future plans.
The last week event was hosted by the five government departments that have main responsibility for food and drug supervision.
But this work also involves many other government bodies and liaison groups. It is not entirely clear how these departments will work together.
And there are other corrupt officials willing to bend the rules to allow unsafe food and medicines onto the market. Just last week another senior official from the State Food and Drug Administration, Cao Wenzhuang, was given a suspended death sentence for taking bribes.
Perhaps it is not surprising that China, which still has tens of millions of people living on less than $1 a day, has poor quality food and medicines.
Zhang Yanqiu, an official with the Chinese agricultural ministry, says the country had first to ensure its population is fed before worrying about food standards.
That might have been a good enough answer before but times, and standards, have now changed.

If the tenth anniversary of the currency-led Asian economic crisis went by largely unnoticed it was not just because most of the affected countries bounced back within a comparatively short time.
Many of them had also learnt the right lessons from the traumatic experience and are once again on a high growth path as a part of the larger Asia-Pacific region that is leading the global economy, reported Hindu.com.
Most experts had written off the Asian economic success story at the start of the currency crises. It was on July 2, 1997, that the Thai baht came under attack from speculators, having lost the confidence of international investors and banks. Trying in vain to defend the currency that was then rigidly tied to the dollar, the Thai authorities helplessly watched their reserves evaporate.
The currency crisis was only the starting point, and it inevitably set off a devastating chain reaction across the economy. As several East and South East Asian nations were pursuing similar economic policies and were inextricably linked to one another, the contagion spread quickly across most of Asia.
India and China were considerably less affected by the contagion. Both were following what was then regarded as an insular policy regime. There are still lessons to be learnt from the great Asian crisis.
Some of the key macroeconomic issues are still being debated in India and elsewhere although the context has changed.
For instance, in the 1990s most of the East and South East Asian countries ran huge current account deficits in the region of 7 to 8 per cent of the GDP and capital flows of other countries that once bridged the deficit reversed at the first sign of a crisis.
Also, most of those governments had encouraged their large corporates to go in for short-term loans from abroad. The unwillingness of the lenders to roll over the loans caused widespread bankruptcy. Aggravating the crisis was the fact that most currencies of the region were rigidly tied to the dollar.
All countries in the region now have “a managed float“ and invariably run a current account surplus and there is a much better system of financial sector regulation. Another lesson, probably too well learnt, is to build up foreign exchange reserves as an insurance.
Today the debate is not over the need for such reserves but the appropriate size for each country. Many Asian countries, with China in the forefront, have built up huge reserves whose deployment has major consequences for the global economy. There are policy dilemmas in India and other countries in dealing with the huge dollar inflows.
It is clear that in many policy areas the impact of the Asian crisis will continue to be felt for a long time.

BP's outgoing chief executive Lord Browne (l) with his replacement Tony Hayward, May 1.

When he abruptly resigned as chief executive of BP PLC (BP) on May 1, John Browne left the company in disarray.
The giant energy producer was struggling with a legacy of accidents and spills in the US. It was embroiled in a property dispute that threatened its position in Russia, a region that provides a quarter of its output. And morale had flagged as its shares, once among the hottest in the oil and gas industry, were losing ground to rivals. The job of fixing BP’s problems fell to Tony Hayward, Browne’s successor and a 25-year veteran of the company.
According to Businessweek.com, Browne, who rescued BP from financial trouble in the early 1990s and then built it into a global leader, once looked like he’d be a tough act to follow. But the company’s woes and revelations about Browne’s personal life that preceded his departure have made it much easier for Hayward to pursue his own instincts. While still early, it looks as though Hayward, 50, will try to boost BP’s results more with efficiency gainsÑpossibly including job cutsÑthan with the wheeling and dealing that was Browne’s hallmark.
Hayward’s style so far has been the antithesis of that of his former boss. Browne was a natty dresser and opera buff who was aloof from most BP staff members. Hayward, by contrast, goes in for rugby and Eric Clapton, and often drops by the basement cafeteria of BP’s London headquarters in his shirtsleeves for coffee. On recent visits to the company’s US refineries, he spent hours talking to equipment operators rather than huddled with senior managers.
While the company’s catalog of woes might seem overwhelming, Hayward is determined to restore BP’s “winning ways,“ as he wrote in a May 1 staff memo. He thinks that can be done by focusing on a few key issues. The company has always been good at finding oil, whether by discovering new fields deep beneath the ocean floor or by schmoozing potentates such as Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, who awarded BP an exploration tract the size of Belgium in May.
But Hayward realizes that BP has been weak at running basic operations such as refineries. Some think he needs to come up with a radical solution, much as Browne did at the beginning of his tenure, when he launched a wave of industry consolidation by taking over both Amoco and Atlantic Richfield in the late 1990s. One possible tactic: closer ties with a national oil company, such as Russia’s Gazprom, which would give BP huge reserves in exchange for access to its distribution network.
But first Hayward will have to demonstrate that BP can manage the sprawling array of businesses assembled under Browne. If not, hedge funds and other investors may start calling for his head and a breakup of the company. Job One will be fixing the safety problems that came to light after an explosion that killed 15 people at a refinery in Texas City, Tex., two years ago.
Hayward has boosted spending at BP’s US refineries--where the most serious problems have occurred--by $500 million per year, to $1.7 billion annually over the next four years. The money will go into new and better equipment as well as safety training.
At the same time, BP and its partners are moving ahead with plans to renew the infrastructure at Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay oil field, which has suffered a series of leaks and other mishaps.
“There can be no compromise on safety,“ Hayward said in the May 1 memo. “We must pay particular attention during this time of change.“

Mehdi Eker, Turkey’s minister of agriculture and rural affairs, has accused opposition parties of building up unrealistic hopes and highlighted the impossibility of a YTL1 price for diesel fuel (YTL is the new abbreviation for new Turkish lira).
“The price of diesel cannot be YTL1 without having an adequate domestic source. If it becomes the price, then an economic crisis becomes unavoidable. This kind of a mindset drove Turkey into economic crises in 1999. Announcing that the price of diesel will be YTL1 is just like paving the way for an economic crisis and is akin to building castles in the sky. I invite all parties to become realistic. It is not ethical to fool people with unrealistic promises.“
As reported by Todayszaman.com, it is technically impossible to make the price of diesel fuel YTL1 without a domestic source.
Eker noted: “Where is the source that will enable them to set the price of diesel fuel at YTL1? They are trying to attract interest as they know that they will not be able to pass the threshold in the election. We are now giving the necessary support for diesel fuel, and we [the Justice and Development Party (AK Party)] became the first party to provide financial support for diesel fuel. They know that they will not be able to pass the threshold, so they fool people by giving unrealistic promises. However, we are realistic. We increased exports in agriculture by using subsidies rationally.“
In response to the unrealistic promises of opposition parties the AK Party drafted a report that provides information on agricultural supports that have been available during their period of governance.
According to the report, prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, farmers who are registered with the Farmer Registration System received a financial subsidy of YTL3.9 for diesel fuel between 2003-2004. A total cost of YTL325 million was estimated in April of 2004. Between October and November 2005, YTL406 million was paid for diesel fuel as a governmental incentive. Financial support for diesel fuel was not provided in 2006 due to budgetary problems.
But the government again agreed on offering subsidies to farmers registered with the Farmer Registration System in 2006, with the subsidy allowed in February, April and June of that year amounting to a total cost of YTL478.7 million.
Haydar Bas, leader of the Independent Turkey Party, was the first person to initiate discussions on diesel fuel, but his arguments did not have much of an impact.
The other opposition parties were forced to say something about diesel when Cem Uzan, the leader of the Young Party, brought the issue to the agenda in advance of the July 22 elections. Then Bas promised that the price of diesel fuel would be YKr80.
While the CHP said the price of diesel would decrease by half, the Nationalist Movement Party promised to abolish the Private Consumption Tax (OTV) and the Value-added Tax (KDV). Mehmet Agar, the leader of the Democrat Party said the price will be lower than YTL1.
The price of diesel fuel is now YTL2.23. YKr83.4 of this price is OTV, YKr34 of it is KDV and YKr1.4 of it is the Energy Market Regulatory Authority share. The total cost of the tax burden
is YTL1.17.
Opposition parties promise to abolish these taxes.