By John E. Carey
Peace and Freedom
July 10, 2007
China’s state television and the official Xinhua News Agency said that China had executed Zheng Xiaoyu the former State Food and Drug Administration director.
Zheng Xiaoyu managed China’s operation to review and approve food and drugs from 1998 until 2005.
During Zheng’s tenure his agency approved six medicines that turned out to be fake, and the drug-makers used falsified documents to apply for approvals, according to previous state media reports. One antibiotic caused the deaths of at least 10 people.
Photo courtesy of Xinhua.
Zheng, 63, was convicted of taking cash and gifts worth $832,000 when he was in charge of the State Food and Drug Administration.
At the time of his conviction, nearly all China watchers predicted that his sentence would be downgraded to life imprisonment, which is frequently the practice in such cases. In fact, in recent memory, there are no known senior officials that actually met their executioners even after a death sentence.
This execution was a needless act of cruelty to assuage the fears of the west about Chinese-made products and to “save face” for the Chinese leadership.
Listen to how China’s government spokesman characterized the execution.
“The few corrupt officials of the SFDA are the shame of the whole system and their scandals have revealed some very serious problems,” agency spokeswoman Yan Jiangying said at a news conference held to highlight efforts to improve China’s track record on food and drug safety.
SFDA stands for the State Food and Drug Administration.
So China, to lesson its own shame and to regain its market share, heartlessly executed a bureaucrat whose crime was looking the other way for less than a million dollars.
We deplore this killing as a needless and wonton abuse of human rights. This one man is not the cause or source of China’s massive breakdown of proper procedures, checks and balances. His death adds nothing to China’s reputation and does nothing to restore western confidence in China’s products.
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