WALMART, an American supermarket chain, has been having a tough time recently in China, one of its fastest growing markets. On October 25th it reopened 13 stores in the south-western region of Chongqing which were closed for two weeks as punishment for mislabelling a pork product. Chinese officials have recently had a pang of food-safety conscience, and a big foreign firm has offered an easy target. Food-related scandals, often exacerbated by official negligence or corruption, can cause major political embarrassment in China. In the approach to the Olympic games in Beijing in August 2008, the leadership's efforts to create an image of a safe and hygienic China led to the suppression of news about a widespread contamination of milk products with melamine, a chemical that can be toxic. By the time the central government admitted the problem in September that year, tens of thousands of babies had been affected and several had died. Public anger over the incident hastened the passing of a food-safety law in 2009 which was intended to tighten standards, improve supervision and impose tougher penalties on violators. It appears to have done no more to alleviate public anxiety than did the execution in 2007 of a former head of the State Food and Drug Administration for taking bribes to certify products as safe. Toxic foodstuffs continue to be sold. This year the authorities announced a renewed campaign against the use of the steroid clenbuterol after it was discovered in pork products in March. The chemical can make meat leaner, but can also be the cause of heart palpitations, diarrhoea and muscle tremors. 31-32 Can't pay, won't pay Companies' cash is drying up, with dire consequences for their workers TFFORTS to curb inflation in China are having some painful side-effects. A squeeze on bank lending has prompted some businesses short of cash to stop paying wages to blue-collar workers. Even the much-vaunted state sector is feeling the pinch. Work has all but ground to a halt on thousands of kilometres of railway track,and many of the network's 6m construction workers have been complaining about not being paid for weeks or sometimes months.Migrant workers from China's vast countryside are usually the first to suffer when employers find themselves strapped for cash. In February a revision to the criminal law made it illegal for a company to withhold salary if it had the means to pay. This has done little to protect the more than 150m rural migrants who perform most of the country's manual labour. A household-registration system that discriminates against migrants in employment, housing, health care and education reinforces a widespread tendency to treat them as second-class citizens. The government touted building railways as a great way to keep the economy buoyant during global financial trouble, and boost employment. But the $600 billion stimulus launched in 2008 is all but spent. Indeed, the central government has urged state banks to cut back on lending in order to curb inflation, which in the year to July reached a three-year high of 6.5%, before dropping to 6.1% in September.
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