One distinction that I'd like to bring up is that the Chinese government isn't some sort of single-minded monolithic institution. There's a huge amount of difference between the Chinese central government and the local governments, and these groups have vastly different priorities. The latter are well known to be extremely corrupt, and they're generally the ones who are involved in the actual coverups. The central government, on the other hand, tends to crack down on any apparent corruption, and are generally not involved in protecting people who skirt laws and regulations.
I'm not trying to say that the PRC central government is some sort of white knight, but they really don't stand to gain from ethical violations. The main things that they care about have to do with keeping themselves in power, and they've found that a reputation for harshly treating with corrupt officials serves to do that.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4693139a3600.html
Quote:
NZ officials blew whistle on milk scare
Monday, 15 September 2008
New Zealand officials "blew the whistle" on the sale of contaminated milk linked to the death of at least one baby in China, Prime Minister Helen Clark says.
The contaminated milk powder was sold by New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra's Chinese joint venture partner, Sanlu – raising fears the scandal could taint New Zealand's reputation in the massive market.
The Green Party is questioning why Fonterra did not go public with concerns after it yesterday revealed it had been aware of the contamination since mid-August, despite a full public recall only being initiated last week.
But Miss Clark today said Fonterra had pushed for a full recall at the earliest possible opportunity but had been blocked by Chinese local government officials.
"They have been trying for weeks to get official recall and the local authorities in China would not do it," she said on TVNZ's Breakfast programme.
Miss Clark said the first she knew about the issue was on September 5.
Three days later she convened a meeting of senior ministers at which she ordered officials to leapfrog the local officials and immediately inform their superiors in Beijing.
"As you can imagine when New Zealand Government blew the whistle in Beijing a very heavy hand then descended on the local authorities," she said.
"At a local level. . .I think the first inclination was to try and put a towel over it and deal with it without an official recall. That is never what we would do in New Zealand."
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Note here that the officials that blocked the New Zealand company were at the local level (probably because they would have been the ones held responsible). They would probably have had more luck if they had contacted the central government instead; if only because the ones contacted wouldn't be directly involved in the scandal.