, Columnist
Why China Can’t Keep Its Cooking Oil Clean
The country’s awesomely powerful surveillance state is designed to defend the regime, not citizens’ health and livelihoods.
Not the last oil scandal.
Photographer: Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images
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China is full of contradictions. One of the most puzzling — and glaring — is that its government can somehow delete a politically offensive social media post instantaneously yet seems incapable of keeping food supplies safe.
The latest example is the revelation that Chinese companies have been regularly shipping edible cooking oil in the same tankers used to carry fuel extracted from coal. According to Caixin, a respected business publication, the government has turned a blind eye to the widespread practice for years.