KEY POINTS:
In a post headed, "This formula can be used for disaster relief?", a father under the name "78900880088" tells of his nightmare. His daughter has developed health problems after drinking San Lu milk.
He tries to get San Lu and the government department responsible for food safety
to test the milk, but gets nowhere. So, on May 21, he vents his frustrations on the Chinese social networking site, Tianya.
If you believe what you read on the internet, "78900880088" is one of the first whistleblowers on the San Lu contaminated milk scandal. The "disaster relief" reference relates to San Lu's RMB8.8 million (NZ$1.9 million) donation of milk powder to Sichuan earthquake victims.
According to Shanghai blog ChinaSmack (www.chinasmack.com), 78900880088 is later unmasked by a journalist as Wang Yuan-ping, who was apparently contacted by San Lu and offered RMB2476.8 worth of milk products if he deleted his previous posts. Strangely, the 40-year-old father agrees and the posts disappear, although they seem to still be available via Tianya's cache.
Fact or fiction? From this distance, it's hard to tell. But the story, billed as "Kidney Stone Gate" on ChinaSmack, has gathered momentum in the blogosphere, and looks destined to find a place in web folklore.
An example of how one man and the internet can make a difference. Another blogger who may not be making a difference, but is making waves, is Beijing-based Imagethief (news.imagethief.com), who has some harsh words about Fonterra's role in the scandal.
"Here's the million-RMB question: did Fonterra have a responsibility to go public in China based on what they knew? To someone not directly involved (such as me) it looks an awful lot like Fonterra sat on its hands despite knowing that customers were at risk, possibly to protect its business and relationships in China ... Their reputation is hostage to the behaviour of their partners and right now they look complicit in a sketchy situation."
Imagethief is William Moss, an American in Beijing and a director at an international public relations agency. He provides an interesting disclosure at the end of his post - he once worked for Fonterra's PR firm in Singapore, although Fonterra was not his client.
Chinese bloggers are also exercised by a piece of CCTV (China's state television) footage from September 2007 - an item from the "Made In China" series called "Behind the 1100 inspection steps." It purports to be an investigation of San Lu's baby formula advertising slogan, seen in Beijing supermarkets: "1110 inspection steps, protects the health of babies, deserves the trust of mothers!"
In search of the truth, an intrepid CCTV reporter visits a Shijiazhuang dairy farm, follows milk delivery trucks, and observes the factory sampling inspection process, concluding there really were more than 1100 inspection steps before the baby formula was sent out.
According to collaborative news website China Digital Times, (chinadigitaltimes.net) the phrase has now become a black humour line in the Chinese blogosphere.
The humour gets blacker again in a satirical lament from a Chinese netizen that's been translated by EastSouthWestNorth (www.zonaeuropa.com), run by Hong Kong-based blogger, Roland Soong.
"This is yet another gross insult against China made by the international anti-China forces ... China has such a huge population that all the milk in all the cows in the world would not be enough to feed them with fully Westernised pure baby formula. Therefore poison had to be added."
There is plenty of speculation too, about what part the Olympics played in the slow recall of San Lu products. A Sina blogger, also translated on China Digital Times, asks: "Why was the recall issued on Sept 11 if the problem was discovered on Aug 1? What were the watchdog agencies doing during this period of time? Was this related to the ongoing Beijing Olympic Games? Was it that some local government officials were using [them] as an excuse to cover up?"
China Digital Times and others point to the Central Propaganda Department's "21-Point Directive On Reporting Olympics", in particular, point eight - "All food safety issues, such as cancer-causing mineral water, is off-limits" - as one explanation.
Big Brother Chang, a Government IT employee working in Beijing, who runs Seagull Reference, (seagullreference.blogspot.com) has a telling timeline of events which give some support to the cover-up theory. He also highlights another conspiracy: "An internal fax surfaced today revealed (sic) more about the behind the curtain operations of the San Lu (Triple Deer) powdered milk scandal."
The fax letter, allegedly from a PR firm recommends three parallel strategies: "1) Silencing victims; 2) Buying out our official search engine in China, Baidu; 3) Citing national standard." The letter also gets quite specific, advising San Lu to pay Baidu RMB3 million to have the company censor search results containing negative news about San Lu. In response, both Baidu and the PR firm have said the letter was fake.
Not surprisingly there is plenty of strong blog opinion about the scandal. "Is food in China edible? Chinese people started to ask," says a post on Global Voices (globalvoicesonline.org).
Fools Mountain (blog.foolsmountain.com), a San Francisco-based collaborative has a similar bleak outlook. "San Lu says it got a tainted source of milk; nevertheless many people still speculate based on similar black-heart food incidents in the past that, for reasons of profit, the manufacturer knowingly kept a closed eye on doping in its food processing chain."
Jotman (jotman.blogspot.com), a Thai blogger, who sprang to fame during the 2006 Thai coup thinks there is "something creepy" about the sale of infant milk formulas - especially to mothers in the developing world. "I think it's even creepier when the companies pushing the milk products - marketing them 'health foods' - are based in the West. Do Asian infants have any real dietary need for cow's milk?"
Meanwhile Chinese bloggers are now turning their anger on celebrities who featured in advertisements for San Lu and other contaminated products.
EastSouthWestNorth reports on an internet portal poll asking whether celebrity spokespersons should bear responsibility. Significantly, 34 per cent said they were "largely responsible because they betrayed the public's trust in them." One netizen suggested celebrity spokespersons should "donate their earnings from those evil advertisements towards victim compensation".
