It takes a woman

To get a country to shape up and behave itself:

After this summer's wave of bad news about China's product safety, Beijing finally decided it was time to patch things up. So the leadership did exactly what it has done in every tough situation China has faced over the past decade or so: It called on 68-year-old Vice-Premier Wu Yi.

Her gentle, friendly demeanor can be deceiving: The highest-ranking woman in China's Communist Party hierarchy is Beijing's enforcer of last resort. In recent years, she has cleaned up the country's image after the SARS crisis, overseen the response to the AIDS epidemic, led tough trade negotiations with Washington, and shored up the mainland's shoddy record on intellectual-property rights.

And now she's head of a new high-level food, drug, and product safety team.

[snip]

She brings to the job a reputation as a tough negotiator with an almost obsessive attention to detail. She's not afraid of stern measures: During SARS, she quickly quarantined thousands of suspected patients. But she has a sense of humor and a degree of candor that's unusual in China, and she often gives the likes of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. an affectionate hug before sitting down across the table.

We could sure use someone like that in this administration....



Update: She has her work cut out for her:

BEIJING (AP) — Chinese authorities ordered the recall of tainted leukemia drugs blamed for leg pains and other problems, state media reported Sunday, the latest crisis to strike the country's embattled food and drug industries.

Most of the drugs involved — methotrexate and cytarabin hydrochloride — have been recovered and authorities have traced the remainder, the Xinhua News Agency said. The report did not say if any of the drugs had been exported.
Authorities have banned the sale and distribution of the drugs, produced by the Shanghai Hualian Pharmaceutical Co., it said.

China, a major global supplier, has been facing growing international pressure to improve the quality of its exports after dangerous toxins — from lead to an antifreeze ingredient — were found in goods including toys and toothpaste.

China has been eager to cast itself as a victim, too, of unsafe imports. Xinhua on Saturday announced that inspectors recently found residue of the banned stimulant ractopamine in frozen pig kidneys imported from the United States and frozen pork spareribs from Canada. The names of the exporting companies were not identified. Ractopamine is forbidden for use as veterinary medicine in China.