‘Trust but verify’ needed

President Ronald Reagan, asked if he trusted his main communist adversary, Soviet leader Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, said: "Trust, but verify."

That may be the best way to describe how everyone who does business with China should operate. A long series of product safety scandals rocked both China the producer and almost all other nations, China's customers, since last December. The lesson for the West certainly is, "Trust, But Verify."

We consulted with a manufacturing process and quality specialist with experience in China who told us: "I found it impossible to get companies in China to acknowledge that foreign customers needed to exert some control over the process and thus the product. The Chinese just would not listen. Now they are reaping the result."

The process engineer finished with this: "It is quite impossible for any Chinese official to guarantee anything in China because of the lack of control that the government has and the lack of standards we take for granted in the West."

Even so, on Aug. 18, China's director of product safety, Li Changjiang, said on China's state TV network, "More than 99 percent of our goods meet standards. Demonizing Chinese products, or talking of the Chinese product threat, I think is simply a new kind of trade protectionism."

He went on to say this last nine months of scandal and bad news about China's products was all "politically motivated, unfair, biased and poisoned by jealousy."

Maybe so Most Honorable Li Changjiang, but since your TV appearance:

c The government of New Zealand began to investigate clothing imports from China after some were found to contain dangerously high levels of the chemical formaldehyde. Concentrations up to 900 times the normal safe level of formaldehyde were found in woolen and cotton clothes from China. A physician told us, on the condition of anonymity, "This level of formaldehyde is toxic, even cancer causing."

c A Beijing factory was found to have recycled used chopsticks and sold up to 100,000 pairs a day without any form of disinfection. This is so blatantly wrong and dangerous that no further comment is necessary.

c The U.S. corporation that imports SpongBob SquarePants journals made in China announced that the products contain toxic lead paint. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission ordered a recall.

And just to remind the Most Honorable Li Changjiang, on Aug. 5, China's deputy head of the State Food and Drug Administration, Hui Lusheng, said: "At present, the food safety situation has improved, yet is still serious."

"Since last year reports of 'red-yolk duck eggs' and so on have often caused wide concern in society about food safety, and warned us that our country is in a period of high risk," Mr. Hui said, referring to a contaminated egg scare.

"Dealing with and preventing food safety risks is a long-term, arduous and complicated project, which needs society to work together and comprehensive prevention," she added.

Toys, toothpaste, cough syrup, seafood, eggs, pet food and a host of other products made in China have been found to be unsafe, poisonous or toxic since last December.

And China has been less than 100 percent truthful. China rarely if ever speaks the truth. And now the world knows.

But many in the world knew before, or should have. And companies such as America's Mattel Inc., the toy company, did not do due diligence by properly verifying Chinese claims and thoroughly inspecting products made in China. Mattel had to recall 18.7 million toys. One Mattel executive, who asked us not to use his name, told us, "We lost control of the manufacturing process."

"There is no excuse for lead to be found in toys entering this country," said the acting chairwoman of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, Nancy A. Nord. "It's totally unacceptable and it needs to stop."

Children were put at risk. The head of one of the Chinese companies involved committed suicide. All this was unnecessary.

Pssst. American companies: You cannot trust China. You have to verify.

So Pssst. China. Get with the rest of the world. Join the 21st century. Abide by our product requirements. Read, understand and follow the specifications. Enforce your laws, make new regulations where needed, and admit the truth.

Finally, there are geostrategic implications to all of this. China holds more U.S. debt that almost any nation except Japan. China now is one of the largest manufacturers of American goods. China has embarked on a huge military build-up. But nobody knows how much China is spending on defense, and procurement projects are shrouded in secrecy.

Adm. Timothy J. Keating, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, said recently of China, "We are watching very carefully."

The problem with China is that you cannot always see through to the truth.

John E. Carey is former president of International Defense Consultants Inc. and a frequent contributor to The Washington Times. He has lived in China.