China: Contaminated Integrity

BEIJING — China’s leaders scrambled Saturday to contain public dismay over widespread contamination of milk supplies, criticizing local officials for negligence while moving to tamp down criticism of the government’s response.

Officials promised to keep stores supplied with clean milk and set up medical hot lines nationwide to help people cope with one of the worst product safety scandals in years.

Milk and dairy products from 22 companies have been recalled after batches tainted with the industrial chemical melamine sickened more than 6,200 children and left four infants dead from kidney failure.

Trying to shore up public confidence, Premier Wen Jiabao told senior Communist Party members that official misconduct contributed to the milk contamination and earlier product scandals. He demanded they put public safety “at the top of the agenda.”

In a show of concern, Wen’s chief deputy made a highly publicized trip to a dairy region south of Beijing at the center of the scandal, visiting farms, shops and a hospital, where he urged “all-out efforts on medical treatment” for the sick.

The energetic response underscored the deep challenge the crisis poses for the communist leadership. The government has staked its legitimacy in part on competent management of a rapidly developing society, a reputation it hoped would be burnished by last month’s lavish, well-run Beijing Olympics.

But the post-Olympic accolades have been pushed aside, and the scandal is again baring widespread public skepticism about the government’s abilities to get lower level officials to enforce policies and overcome cover-ups of problems.

In the 10 days since the government revealed that Shijiazhuang Sanlu Group sold tainted milk powder and infant formula, sketchy details have exposed one local government cover-up as well as the sale of contaminated milk by China’s biggest dairies, many of them state-owned.

Recalls of Chinese-made dairy products widened Saturday to Japan, which followed the lead of Singapore, while more products were recalled in the self-governing Chinese territories of Hong Kong and Macau.

Seeking to rein in criticism, propaganda officials ordered newspapers, TV stations and Web sites to mainly use reports from the government’s official Xinhua News Agency, news employees at two publications reported.

Food and product safety scandals have been a feature of Chinese life. Only last year, the government promised to overhaul inspection procedures after exports of medicines, toys and other products that killed and sickend people in the United States.

Also last year, pet food contaminated with melamine killed thousands of pets in North and South America. The dangerous chemical in the pet food was the same as in the milk scandal -- melamine. Used in making plastics, melamine is high in nitrogen, which registers as protein in tests of milk.

Some of the farmers who sell milk to Chinese food companies are thought to have used melamine to disguise watered-down milk.