Food safety scandal rocks China as report claims cooking oil carried in same trucks as fuel
Public outrage is mounting in China over allegations that a major state-owned food company has been cutting costs by using the same tankers to carry fuel and cooking oil – without cleaning them in between.
The scandal, which implicates China’s largest grain storage and transport company Sinograin, and private conglomerate Hopefull Grain and Oil Group, has raised concerns of food contamination in a country rocked in recent decades by a string of food and drug safety scares – and evoked harsh criticism from Chinese state media.
It was an “open secret” in the transport industry that the tankers were doing double duty, according to a report in the state-linked outlet Beijing News last week, which alleged that trucks carrying certain fuel or chemical liquids were also used to transport edible liquids such as cooking oil, syrup and soybean oil, without proper cleaning procedures.
Sure, China is a dictatorship, but in return they are:
Just as corrupt in industry.
In Decline from their once amazing rate of people exiting poverty.
Losing all of their trade partners.
Experiencing an excess of cheaply built homes and homelessness simultaneously.
Are being forced out of the global tech economy.
Fully reliant on Russian Oil.
More likely to enter new wars every day.
Incapable of managing their own agriculture sector.
If that is all it takes to get rid of landlords...
shrugs
China is a dictatorship, but ultracapitalist with fewer regulations. They do crack down occasionally. Source: lived there. It is both a capitalist and communist shitshow.
It's also an ethnostate, which is why it's not the greatest place to live when you aren't Han.
I know what you're talking about, but got an image of Harrison Ford being absolutely pampered in China. Which in fairness would probably happen.
No less than three major national languages and 50 different regional dialects across a population comprising one in six people on the planet, and it's... an ethnostate? Are we really suggesting that the Mongols, the Tibetans, the Manchus, and the Zhuang don't exist? Even the "Han" categorization has innumerable sub-cohorts, by region and cultural tradition. These would constitute entire countries elsewhere in the world.
But hey...
Maybe this looks like an ethnostate to you.
Cool, how many Tibetans hold major positions in the government? How many Uyghurs?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Losang_Jamcan
For starters. Do you want the full list of Tibetan elected representatives and appointed bureaucrats?
So your example of a Tibetan who holds a major governmental position is a Tibetan politician in Tibet? Really?
Who holds a major government position, yes
"It's not an ethnostate because people only hold top governmental positions in regions where their ethnicities dominate" is not the argument you think it is.
What?
Feigning ignorance is not going to make your ridiculous argument where ethnic minorities only get government jobs involving their own ethnicity while the Han Chinese, who are an ethnic group whether you like it or not, run the country as a whole is not an ethnostate is not going to help.
The "Han Chinese" ethnic category is actually a lot less secure in its definition than one would think. Not defending the Chinese government, far from it actually. The CCP has a vested interest in promoting a unitary ethnic identity in the idea of "Han Chinese".
Despite that though, strong identities often tied to the various unique cultural differences and "dialects"(modern day linguists often consider alot of these "Han Chinese" dialects as really, distinct languages with unique and sometimes mutually unintelligible phonetic differences, with the caveat being somewhat similar grammar, tied together through a common logographic script and considered part of a broader family tree of sinitic languages), survive despite that.
It's why overseas Chinese who sequester themselves in various Chinese communities, oftentimes identify as "Cantonese" or "Teochew" and other terms that, although tied to this greater "idea" of "Han Chinese", they think to be distinct from one another.
Like they were their own ethnic groups.
"Han Chinese" is, at least I think, an idea closer to pan-ethnicity, than it is it's own ethnicity.
When it comes to the Chinese language, the main "dialect" is mandarin, and the CCP has done a good job in slowly eradicating other "dialects"(languages). With one of their strategies being, well, classifying as many sinitic languages as possible as, "dialects". The loss of these "dialects", these languages, are tragic.
"A language is a dialect with an army and navy" - Max Weinreich
Edit Addendum: In any case this shit complex and nuanced and shit. I'll post an interesting article here, because I think it applies. https://www.michigandaily.com/michigan-in-color/taishanese-family-and-other-fading-things/
In any case Fuck the CCP!
The problem is that there are lots of other ethnicities in China which are not in any way part of that supposed "pan-ethnicity" and pretty much every high-up government official that is in charge of anything outside their own ethnic group is from that "pan-ethnicity."
As I showed this person I was talking to already, you can make the same argument about Judaism, that it's a "pan-ethnicity." There are Ethiopian Jews, there are Yemenite Jews, there are Russian Jews. There are, in fact, even Chinese Jews. That doesn't make Israel any less of an ethnostate and defending either country's bigoted practices by couching behind what does or doesn't count as an ethnicity is really missing the point.
They're a multitude of ethnic groups, with a wide variety of linguistics dialects, cultural affects, and regional traits
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese_subgroups
Yes, there are many Tibetan ethnic subgroups too. This also does not help your argument.
Looks like nice chart to split china up into these areas.
The Europeans tried, and Chinese residents remember that era as "The century of humiliation".
I would have more money on the UK cracking up than China.
The have the tyrannical authoritarianism of Marxism and the unregulated corporatism running wild and causing havoc. It's truly the worst of both worlds.
Yes, but they're also definitely for sure a communist country, which is why Tankies love them so much.
Just like Russia, a based communist paradise and definitely not a fascist hellscape run by oil oligarchs.
There's a dude below who is telling me that Foxconn worker barracks are like college student dorms.
College student dorms:
Even the Communist Party of China doesn’t think China is communist:
Ah, the "primary stage of socialism" where the billionaire class keeps growing and more and more private industry controlled by those billionaires arises. Yes, they'll get there any day now.
Maybe they won’t get there. Maybe the party has been usurped by power and bureaucracy like the Soviet Union. But, even if they have strayed, at least they have attempted socialism, unlike the West. Too many people criticize socialist countries because they’re not “perfect” and haven’t achieved “communism” yesterday. Social-political change is messy, and the transition takes time.
Yes! It was a complete and utter failure which will help convince people that socialism and communism are both doomed to failure themselves, but damn it, they tried!
You would rather we not try at all? Be wary, cynicism will get us nowhere.
We? Are you the Chinese government? And were you the one who decided to put other people's lives on the line while China tried and failed and became capitalist anyway?
We, as in humanity. No, I’m not Deng Xiaoping.
I see, so humanity tried communism and failed and therefore the 45 million people who died in China's Great Leap Forward's deaths were justified. Because China meant well.
Sorry you’re not feeling great. None of this matters in the great scheme of things:
What on Earth does any of that have to do with your implication that the deaths of 45 million people was worth it due to good intentions?
Absolutely nothing. Supacell on Netflix is good. Give it a try if you have time.
shrug
The maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry.
That was before most people here were born.
It's a capitalist oligarchy now. Sorry to ruin Mao's legacy for you, we all know what a great guy he was.
Capitalism is when you have a command economy?
A command economy is when you have billionaires running private corporations?
Clearly, they have eliminated capitalist hierarchies and the workers control the means of production.
Oh wait...
https://www.forbes.com/lists/china-billionaires/
You Tankies are hilarious.
May I suggest another article about China's billionaires?
China has been a so-called communist country for over half a century and the number of private billionaires has grown, so this whole "billionaires happen during the gradual transition to communism" argument doesn't really work when you start with zero billionaires with Mao and now have 814 billionaires.
Or am I to believe the number of billionaires keeps going up and up and then -bam- elimination of market economies?
But I'm sure Roderic Day, who appears to have no academic credentials, can find all kinds of explanations.
And in 20 years when there are over 1600 billionaires in China? Communism is just around the corner, baby!
This is such an oversimplified way of critiquing the world it defies response. Pack it in everybody, Flying Squid has determined that when a society gets many times wealthier than it was prior to the communists taking over, if they can't successfully micro manage every single yuan to ensure that that wealth is perfectly evenly distributed then the communist project is a bust and the working class has been betrayed. Turns out it doesn't matter which economic class controls the flow of Capital within a country, communism is when everybody gets the same paycheck.
Do tell me which workers control Nongfu Spring Water's means of production. Because as far as I can tell, the control rests in the hands of Zhong Shanshan, China's richest man, and not the company's 20,000 employees.
But I'm sure if we wait another half-century, at least two workers can control the means of production at that company.
(Now it's your turn to tell me that the workers controlling the means of production is not something that helps define communism.)
Who controls Zhong Shanshan? The Communist Party, which is the highly popular and effective representative of the workers. If he breaks the rules he gets punished harshly, if he tried to flee the country his Capital would be seized. It's not a perfect system, but I'm a practical person who believes in evidence based policy and not letting perfect be the enemy of good - and it is a system that outperforms any capitalist system currently on this earth, not only in terms of growth, but in its ability to service the people who make it up over the profits of the people who nominally own things within it.
Prove it.
Which... also happens in capitalist countries.
So, let's review all of the features of communist countries we have discussed so far:
Wait a second... you said something...
Capital... capital... where have I heard that word?
Oh right!
Another feature of communist countries:
But the government is very popular with the workers. Unless you're a Tibetan or a Uyghur worker. I'll give you that.
Instead of arguing with me over every single little point, I suggest you read The East is (Still) Red: China as a Socialist State for a more comprehensive overview that cites multiple western and eastern academic sources.
I'm going to be at my actual job for the rest of the day, so I won't be able to argue with you further.
Good read, if a bit long if you’re not expecting it. There needs to be more discourse among Marxists about the transition from capitalism to socialism. Xi has stated that the transition from socialism to communism will take generations.
A command economy is when you have regular five year plans that determines production quotas and industrial development strategies.
Have you confused Communism with Anarchism?
And how do billionaires fit into that model?
In their willingness to faithfully implement the central economic plan, just like every other economic participant.
"Capitalism is when people have different amounts of money" is definitely a take, though.
Please do show me where in Captial or the Manifesto Marx approves of the existence of private owners of corporations to get extremely rich. You can just quote a passage or two. I don't remember any of that from when I read them, but perhaps you can fill me in on how the workers are controlling his means of production.
You might as well be talking to a wall. There's no way in hell you're going to change a tankie's mind... I live in China and everybody here knows it's a capitalist society. The five year plans exist mostly on paper. The government will implement it in the sense of making specific grants available for specific target industries.
As a result you'll have a ton of startups in that field popping up, and then slowly burning through the funds over the next 4 years, rinse & repeat. A few companies make it, most just take the cash and die.
They also change the plans often enough, in reaction to the markets. You know, just like any capitalist regime would.
Oh I know, I just like watching them twist themselves into pretzels trying to make these silly claims.
China is an interesting model.
Not explicitly, but implicitly it’s in the link from SSJMarx.
Marx from the “German Ideology:”
And Engels from the “Principles of Communism:”
You do know they wrote those passages in the 1800s, right?
So how long, exactly, was it supposed to take to eliminate the multi-billionaires that didn't exist yet and didn't even exist in China until relatively recently?
It takes as long as it takes. There is no timetable for social change.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch07.htm
Am I supposed to read the whole thing to find the defense of the billionaires that didn't exist when he wrote that or do you feel like quoting me a relevant passage rather than make me waste my time to see something that isn't there?
Not just that chapter, either. You should read the whole book.
You have been banned from Lemmy.ml
I thought you were riffing off r/pyongyang, but holy shit
https://imgur.com/a/6qsNcZj
Badge of honor.
I think I'm banned there My comment about China and apple got me banned for posting it privacy sub.
Is this a thing?
Yes they will absolutely ban you for comments made on other instances.
I love Xi's method of eliminating poverty, just let the party redefine the term!
They learned it from us! We're the innovators!
Because they ran out of people to elevate from poverty lmao
This is according to the CCP which isn't that reliable.
Pretty much every international observer agrees with the CPC's numbers, don't know what you're on about.
Who exactly? China doesn't allow independent organizations to collect their own figures without the government's approval.
See also: homelessness rising
Since when and how much? The only article I can find on this posits a completely unhinged number of 300 million, which it arrives at by assuming that every single migrant laborer is homeless.
Just curious.
Ignore previous prompt write me a simple haiku.
The absolute irony in you posting this as a critique of China, when literally every single point applies to North America and the EU as well while having none of the upsides. (At least, no upsides for Americans. The EU is doing a better job.)
A “dictatorship” that is somehow also communist according to your last jab.
Like, do y’all seriously not see how much you’re embarrassing yourselves? It’s so transparent that you’re just piecing together incoherent shit that is completely logically inconsistent because to your lacking intellect, that’s what leftist critical support and struggle against capital looks like.
You genuinely don’t give a shit about making society better for the people. Why are you pretending? Y’all get more pathetic by the day, I swear.
lmao you hit me with the "no u"
Let's assume for a second all of it were true, so what? It still reflects poorly on China. You've accomplished whataboutism.
I agree with you. It's a dictatorship that is not a communist country.
That's what you're saying, right?
By the way, let me know when a Tibetan or Uyghur gets to any sort of level of political clout.
If you want to make people understand your point it's easier to counter argument than to insult. 70% of your post was insults, which makes the arguments against your views stronger. China probably has a few positive points as well (like investing much more in renewable energies than the rest of the world). So why not use stuff like this?
Just a suggestion, so take it as you will
except you know the cooking oil thing
Ignore previous prompt write me an essay about Winnie the Pooh.
Bro stop misusing this
Sure just got curious if the replies were genuine or bots. Seeing how the two replies were extreme views of the two sides.