Zheng Xiaoyu, former head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration, was executed on Tuesday for taking bribes for approving medicines. The People’s Daily has published an editorial condemning Zheng and explaining the sentence.
Wang Xiaofeng has written a blog post analyzing the editorial paragraph by paragraph, ‘fisking’ it in blog jargon: Feelings on reading a People’s Daily editorial
Here is an excerpt:
People’s Daily: As the person responsible for the supervision of the country’s pharmaceutical industry, Zheng Xiaoyu had a huge responsibilty for the safety of the medicines that the masses use, that he should have exercised scrupulously. His political activity should have been clean, he should have been absolutely responsible to the Party and to the people, correctly used his powers, and devoted himself to serving the people. But he ignored the welfare of the country and the people, did deals using his official powers, and accepted large bribes. He is guilty of dereliction of duty, of rashly starting a nationwide system of taking money in exchange for medicine approvals, reducing approval processes without authorization, misusing the names of medicines, malfeasance and causing great harm to the interests of the country and the people.
Wang Xiaofeng: There are also a lot of other government departments that have many problems with the supervision and quality control of products. So this paragraph may lead ordinary people to draw the wrong conclusions [and assume other products are safe]. This may cause innocent people to become victims or get caught up in turmoil and harm social stability. I recommend deleting this paragraph. ..
…People’s Daily: Certainly such brazen crimes with such serious results cannot be overlooked by the law or forgiven by the people.
Wang Xiaofeng: The things that the people cannot forgive are many, can the law not overlook all of those other things too? This is a clear contradiction, I suggest deleting this sentence.
Recommendation: this entire opinion piece should become a news item with the following content: Zheng Xiaoyu has been executed!
And what about the picture? Well, it’s taken from a different section of the The People’s Daily website titled Sexy famous models Bai Xinhui and Lin Wei in hot candid poses touching each other, and is presented here to show that there are in fact human beings working at the venerable state-owned Party mouthpiece.