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.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
      0·
      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!

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
          0·
          4 months ago

          Do tell me which workers control Nongfu Spring Water’s means of production. Because as far as I can tell, the control rests in the hands of Zhong Shanshan, China’s richest man, and not the company’s 20,000 employees.

          But I’m sure if we wait another half-century, at least two workers can control the means of production at that company.

          (Now it’s your turn to tell me that the workers controlling the means of production is not something that helps define communism.)

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldMEnglish
              0·
              4 months ago

              Who controls Zhong Shanshan? The Communist Party

              Prove it.

              If he breaks the rules he gets punished harshly, if he tried to flee the country his Capital would be seized.

              Which… also happens in capitalist countries.

              So, let’s review all of the features of communist countries we have discussed so far:

              • Wealth-hoarding billionaires
              • Publicly-traded companies on a global stock market
              • Workers making a fraction of what the owners of those publicly-traded companies make
              • Those workers not controlling the means of production
              • The ability to bake over $5 billion in a day
              • Laws that punish people by seizing their capital
              • Capital

              Wait a second… you said something…

              his Capital would be seized.

              Capital… capital… where have I heard that word?

              Oh right!

              Another feature of communist countries:

              • Capitalism

              But the government is very popular with the workers. Unless you’re a Tibetan or a Uyghur worker. I’ll give you that.