成人论坛

All back to normal?

• James Reynolds
• 17 Sep 08, 02:35 PM GMT

I'm writing this post while the closing ceremony of the Paralympic Games goes on at the Olympic Stadium in north Beijing (the event's hard to miss since it's being shown on at least five different TV channels - the only alternatives appear to be a programme about opera or a travel show about Bangladesh).

This ceremony is the conclusion of what has been a pretty successful sequel to the Olympics themselves. The Paralympic sports were well attended by polite and often curious crowds (including me - I had no idea that wheelchairs could be used as weapons till I went to see the final of the men's wheelchair rugby).

For China this is the end of a decade's worth of Olympic and Paralympic planning. This city now has to get back to normal. On Sunday 21 September, emergency clean air measures will come to an end - construction sites will get back to work, and drivers will be allowed to use their cars every day (since late July, they've only been allowed to drive every other day).

But this country doesn't have much time to enjoy a post-Paralympic state of bliss. Right now, China's going through a pretty painful food safety scandal. After a number of food safety problems a year ago, the Communist Party assured its citizens that the right lessons had been learned. But now, thousands of babies have got sick because they've been fed on poisonous milk powder. The government's told worried parents to take their babies to hospital to be checked for kidney stones.

This afternoon, my colleagues and I went to the Beijing Pediatric Research Institute near Ritan Park. Dozens of parents carried in their babies to be checked for kidney stones. Zhao Jian Xin brought in his 15-month-old son Chunxi.

"I took my son to the hospital for a medical check, and he was diagnosed with a stone in the right side of his kidney, because he was given Sanlu milk powder," Mr Zhao told us, "He has now been hospitalized. I feel very bad and very disappointed as well. Sanlu is one of the most famous brands in China. We chose it because we trusted it. But now we are disappointed."

This is the second time this year that parents in China have felt let down by those meant to keep their children safe.

In May, hundreds of school children were killed in the Sichuan earthquake. Parents protested that their children's schools were badly built - that their children were killed not by natural disaster but by corruption and negligence.

Parents whose children have fallen ill after being fed on poisonous baby powder are now threatening action against the milk powder companies. Increasingly, parents in China are not prepared to sit quietly when things go wrong.

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