China still thinks it can get away with it

Their indifference to the world community has never been plainer:

TOKYO — The Japanese government said Friday that at least 175 people had been sickened by insecticide-tainted dumplings from China, prompting supermarkets to pull Chinese-made meat products from their shelves while Tokyo pressed Beijing to improve food safety.

Newspaper headlines warned of a national panic as hundreds more people complained of dizziness and nausea after eating dumplings and other Chinese-made foods. As of Friday, a dozen Japanese food processing companies said they had issued recalls for at least 59 meat products imported from China.

All came from the same company that produced the tainted dumplings, Tianyang Food Processing, in Hebei Province, outside Beijing, the Japanese Health Ministry said. While pesticide has been found only in the dumplings, the ministry said it had halted the sale of all the company’s products.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and other leaders tried to reassure the public that the steps were enough to ensure food safety in Japan, which imports more Chinese food than does the United States. But public opinion appeared at times to carry a tinge of hysteria, and a half dozen large supermarket and department store chains announced that they had taken all Chinese-made processed foods off their shelves.