Intimate Rivals by Sheila A. Smith

Author:Sheila A. Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: POL054000, Political Science/World/Asian, POL031000, Political Science/Political Ideologies/Nationalism
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2015-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

Food Safety and China’s Consumers

The gyōza incident transformed Japanese and Chinese governments’ cooperation on food safety. New policy mechanisms were created to handle the growing interdependence between Japanese food-processing companies and their Chinese joint-venture partners. The first initiative, though, was not about food safety but about how the two governments would manage cross-border criminal investigations. As noted earlier, the MLAT provided the crucial link for the Japanese and Chinese police to cooperate in investigations and to include each other’s evidence as part of a formal indictment. This was a mutual interest and one that faced virtually no opposition from either government.

The cooperation on food safety took somewhat longer to establish. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs remained the primary bureaucratic contact on the food safety issue until the case was resolved in 2010. From the time the food poisonings occurred in January 2008 until the Chinese government notified Tokyo of the arrest of a suspect in China, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs brought up the issue of food safety in virtually every high-level meeting with China’s leaders. On November 13, 2008, Vice-Minister Hashimoto Seiko announced a new webpage, entitled the Food Security Problem, under the foreign policy section for health and medical issues.92 This was followed by the creation of an official position within the ministry that was dedicated to managing food safety issues.

On May 31, 2010, however, the Japanese and Chinese governments came up with a more practical and focused way of working together on food safety issues. This was the first cabinet-level meeting on the new Japan-China food safety initiative, and it was attended by Nagatsuma Akira, Japan’s minister of MHLW, and Wang Yong, China’s director of the AQSIQ. Both ministers signed the memorandum of understanding (MOU) on the new initiative and agreed on an action plan for the coming year.93 The MOU cited four basic goals. First, in compliance with the WTO Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures and the domestic laws of each country, Japan and China would develop a framework for cooperation on ensuring food safety. Second, they agreed to hold ministerial-level meetings once a year and working-level meetings regularly to study and develop policy initiatives on food safety. Third, materials on the laws, regulations, and procedures used to regulate the food industry would be prepared in both the Japanese and Chinese languages. Finally, the two governments would prepare an action plan to set annual targets for cooperation.

The gyōza incident also shed much needed light on two other constituencies in the Japan-China relationship: Chinese workers and Chinese consumers. When his trial opened in the Shijiazhuang Intermediate People’s Court, Lu Yueting, the cook who deliberately injected insecticide into Tianyang Food’s frozen dumplings, confessed that his motivation was not to cause harm to consumers but to attract the attention of his managers.94 As a temporary worker, Liu received far less than others in annual bonuses and salary, and he claimed he wanted a more stable job after fifteen years of working for the company.

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