Posted on 01/01/2013 9:11:37 AM PST by Olog-hai
Kentucky Fried Chicken, which has become a staple food for young Chinese, is under investigation in Shanghai for containing high levels of antibiotics.
The Shanghai Food and Drug Administration told the Oriental Daily newspaper that it has launched a formal investigation and would shortly publish its findings. …
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Not enough cat in it?
The ChiComs suckered the Japs and French into helping build the Chinese High speed rail lines and then booted them both out out of the Country. The ChiComs then went on to attack Walmart and Auchan. The ChiComs have also went after McDonald’s recently. When will we realize that doing business with the ChiComs is a lose lose situation?
Insufficient payments to local officials, perhaps? It could be that one of KFC’s competitors has connections in the government.
Old news, the Shanghai city government already checked and KFC and its supplier are providing good product. The Chinese rumor mill got it wrong when it spread mis information on KFC. It’s the smaller vendors which may use dodgy product.
Now with MORE melamine!
This is real news. Who would have thought that there were any standards in China?
What, absolute standards?
Kentucky Fried Canine?
You beat me to it.. this is the stage where the Chi-coms seize the property of the "useful idiots" as Lenin called them. I guess individual KFCs are local franchises but soon KFC corp. will be out of the picture entirely.
Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) allowed the incentive of free markets to create wealth and save the 1917 revolution. The useful idiots and the local NEPmen quickly developed a lively economy.
Stalin later as was his wont ended both the useful idiots and the NEPmen participation.. the latter violently.
Deng's version of NEP is smarter.. the Chi-com and their families are the NEPmen and became billionaires; now it's time to put the useful idiots on a slow boat to America penniless.
.. and no way will Americans stand for Congress giving a TARP to cover the greedy idiots' losses when they reach America.
I sincerely doubt that's happening. A lot of Chinese money is leaving China for destinations where it can't be seized by the government. While there are lucrative opportunities in China for the well-connected, a fair chunk of capital has left because the risk of being on the losing end of a factional dispute (a la Bo Xilai) is too high. A lot of that money probably finds its way into index funds, in which Yum Brands is a perennial component, since it spun off from Pepsico. I'd guess that some Chinese nationalist, who might also be taking bribes from local restaurant chains, is sticking it to KFC.
This stuff has nothing to do with communism, and everything to do with local businesses working the system to tilt the playing field in their favor. The only reason the Communist label has been retained is because the party's more or less a theocratic cult with Mao as a kind of supreme deity. The collapse of that folk religion could result in civil disturbances and factional fights that might boil over into full-scale civil war.
If communism meant nothing and was a scourge upon the Chinese, then the ancient Chinese tradition of holding grudges and settling scores in blood comes into play. Given the massive body count racked up by Mao and his henchmen, a serious bloodletting that makes Syria look like a walk in the park isn't unthinkable. There are plenty of descendants of landlords and other petit bourgeoisie who know how their ancestors were hacked to pieces, summarily shot, tortured or starved to death in labor camps. They've been indoctrinated about how their parents' and grandparents' deaths were good and necessary for the advancement of the nation. If Communism as a state religion is repudiated lock, stock and barrel as a huge mistake, it's Ceausescu time.
Special thanks for this cogent summary this is what really happened:
"Given the massive body count racked up by Mao and his henchmen, a serious bloodletting that makes Syria look like a walk in the park isn't unthinkable. There are plenty of descendants of landlords and other petit bourgeoisie who know how their ancestors were hacked to pieces, summarily shot, tortured or starved to death in labor camps. They've been indoctrinated about how their parents' and grandparents' deaths were good and necessary for the advancement of the nation. If Communism as a state religion is repudiated lock, stock and barrel as a huge mistake, it's Ceausescu time."
I did read that the Communists studied NEP and Deng grilled Armand Hammer about it. Hammer was there in Russia at the time of Lenin.
I do honestly believe that the destruction of the PRC from within is preferable to all out war -- however I do not believe that freedom would result nor the threat of war but the threat would be delayed.
I think the inspiration for China's conversion to capitalism may lie closer to home. Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew recalls his first meeting with Deng Xiaoping:
I saw it coming from the late 1980s. Deng Xiaoping started this in 1978. He visited Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore in November 1978. I think that visit shocked him because he expected three backward cities. Instead he saw three modern cities and he knew that communism -- the politics of the iron rice bowl -- did not work. So, at the end of December, he announced his open door policy. He started free trade zones and from there, they extended it and extended it. Now they have joined the WTO and the whole country is a free trade zone.What the Chinese have is a non-hereditary monarchy that requires the continual validation of the Communist Party's existence via denials of the past to avoid the violent revolts and reprisals that might follow real criticisms of the Party's bloody history and a re-examination of the Party's right to exist, never mind rule. China is now capitalist in all but name, but its aristocratic rulers, who are mainly descended from the new royals who ascended the throne in 1949, need to keep the Party's name unsullied in the minds of the masses to continue ruling and thereby hold on to the perks to which they have become accustomed.
Much as it pains me to say it, I think Communism in China was a boon to its neighbors and the rest of the world. China's history is one of almost unbroken territorial expansion. Communism weakened it to the point where it has been unable to conduct a large-scale invasion of its neighbors during the entirety of the Party's 60 years or so in power. It is only now, that China's economy is somewhat revived, that its leaders have felt confident enough to throw their weight around. If Chiang had won in 1949, there might have been large-scale problems in the region long before today. Imperial Japan's adventures in Asia were merely modeled on China's 2000 year record of territorial expansion. I will agree with you, though, that the best chance China's neighbors have for peace is if the Chinese fight a debilitating civil war.
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