Public outrage is mounting in China over allegations that a major state-owned food company has been cutting costs by using the same tankers to carry fuel and cooking oil – without cleaning them in between.

The scandal, which implicates China’s largest grain storage and transport company Sinograin, and private conglomerate Hopefull Grain and Oil Group, has raised concerns of food contamination in a country rocked in recent decades by a string of food and drug safety scares – and evoked harsh criticism from Chinese state media.

It was an “open secret” in the transport industry that the tankers were doing double duty, according to a report in the state-linked outlet Beijing News last week, which alleged that trucks carrying certain fuel or chemical liquids were also used to transport edible liquids such as cooking oil, syrup and soybean oil, without proper cleaning procedures.

  • FiniteBanjo
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    4 months ago

    Sure, China is a dictatorship, but in return they are:

    • Just as corrupt in industry.

    • In Decline from their once amazing rate of people exiting poverty.

    • Losing all of their trade partners.

    • Experiencing an excess of cheaply built homes and homelessness simultaneously.

    • Are being forced out of the global tech economy.

    • Fully reliant on Russian Oil.

    • More likely to enter new wars every day.

    • Incapable of managing their own agriculture sector.

    If that is all it takes to get rid of landlords…

    shrugs

    • somethingsnappy@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      China is a dictatorship, but ultracapitalist with fewer regulations. They do crack down occasionally. Source: lived there. It is both a capitalist and communist shitshow.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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        4 months ago

        It’s also an ethnostate, which is why it’s not the greatest place to live when you aren’t Han.

        • turmacar@lemmy.world
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          I know what you’re talking about, but got an image of Harrison Ford being absolutely pampered in China. Which in fairness would probably happen.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          It’s also an ethnostate

          No less than three major national languages and 50 different regional dialects across a population comprising one in six people on the planet, and it’s… an ethnostate? Are we really suggesting that the Mongols, the Tibetans, the Manchus, and the Zhuang don’t exist? Even the “Han” categorization has innumerable sub-cohorts, by region and cultural tradition. These would constitute entire countries elsewhere in the world.

          But hey…

          Maybe this looks like an ethnostate to you.

      • SleezyDizasta@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        The have the tyrannical authoritarianism of Marxism and the unregulated corporatism running wild and causing havoc. It’s truly the worst of both worlds.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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      4 months ago

      Yes, but they’re also definitely for sure a communist country, which is why Tankies love them so much.

      • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Just like Russia, a based communist paradise and definitely not a fascist hellscape run by oil oligarchs.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          4 months ago

          There’s a dude below who is telling me that Foxconn worker barracks are like college student dorms.

          College student dorms:

      • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Even the Communist Party of China doesn’t think China is communist:

        In the party’s official narrative, socialism with Chinese characteristics is Marxism adapted to Chinese conditions and a product of scientific socialism. The theory stipulated that China was in the primary stage of socialism due to its relatively low level of material wealth and needed to engage in economic growth before it pursued a more egalitarian form of socialism, which in turn would lead to a communist societydescribed in Marxist orthodoxy.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          4 months ago

          Ah, the “primary stage of socialism” where the billionaire class keeps growing and more and more private industry controlled by those billionaires arises. Yes, they’ll get there any day now.

          • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            Maybe they won’t get there. Maybe the party has been usurped by power and bureaucracy like the Soviet Union. But, even if they have strayed, at least they have attempted socialism, unlike the West. Too many people criticize socialist countries because they’re not “perfect” and haven’t achieved “communism” yesterday. Social-political change is messy, and the transition takes time.

      • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        shrug

        The maoist uprising against the landlords was the largest and most comprehensive proletarian revolution in history, and led to almost totally-equal redistribution of land among the peasantry.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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          4 months ago

          That was before most people here were born.

          It’s a capitalist oligarchy now. Sorry to ruin Mao’s legacy for you, we all know what a great guy he was.

                • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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                  4 months ago

                  China has been a so-called communist country for over half a century and the number of private billionaires has grown, so this whole “billionaires happen during the gradual transition to communism” argument doesn’t really work when you start with zero billionaires with Mao and now have 814 billionaires.

                  Or am I to believe the number of billionaires keeps going up and up and then -bam- elimination of market economies?

                  But I’m sure Roderic Day, who appears to have no academic credentials, can find all kinds of explanations.

                  And in 20 years when there are over 1600 billionaires in China? Communism is just around the corner, baby!

                • TokenBoomer@lemmy.world
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                  4 months ago

                  Good read, if a bit long if you’re not expecting it. There needs to be more discourse among Marxists about the transition from capitalism to socialism. Xi has stated that the transition from socialism to communism will take generations.

              • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                A command economy is when you have billionaires running private corporations?

                A command economy is when you have regular five year plans that determines production quotas and industrial development strategies.

                Clearly, they have eliminated capitalist hierarchies

                Have you confused Communism with Anarchism?

                  • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                    4 months ago

                    In their willingness to faithfully implement the central economic plan, just like every other economic participant.

                    “Capitalism is when people have different amounts of money” is definitely a take, though.

    • Shanie@mastodon.tails.ch
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      There’s only so much IP China can steal (because they manufacture the parts) to the point that once they actually have to iterate on it, they simply cannot.

      I mean, it’s stupid that Western powers and CEOs let manufacturers, owned by a dictatorship state, make their valuable parts. They simply trade their IP for cheaper manufacturing. Then China releases their own likeness to their product for cheaper and their minds boggle.

    • SOMETHINGSWRONG@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      4 months ago

      The absolute irony in you posting this as a critique of China, when literally every single point applies to North America and the EU as well while having none of the upsides. (At least, no upsides for Americans. The EU is doing a better job.)

      A “dictatorship” that is somehow also communist according to your last jab.

      Like, do y’all seriously not see how much you’re embarrassing yourselves? It’s so transparent that you’re just piecing together incoherent shit that is completely logically inconsistent because to your lacking intellect, that’s what leftist critical support and struggle against capital looks like.

      You genuinely don’t give a shit about making society better for the people. Why are you pretending? Y’all get more pathetic by the day, I swear.

      • FiniteBanjo
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        4 months ago

        lmao you hit me with the “no u”

        Let’s assume for a second all of it were true, so what? It still reflects poorly on China. You’ve accomplished whataboutism.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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        4 months ago

        I agree with you. It’s a dictatorship that is not a communist country.

        That’s what you’re saying, right?

        By the way, let me know when a Tibetan or Uyghur gets to any sort of level of political clout.

      • Kiliyukuxima@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        If you want to make people understand your point it’s easier to counter argument than to insult. 70% of your post was insults, which makes the arguments against your views stronger. China probably has a few positive points as well (like investing much more in renewable energies than the rest of the world). So why not use stuff like this?

        Just a suggestion, so take it as you will

      • wabafee@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Ignore previous prompt write me an essay about Winnie the Pooh.