Apologies for Olympic censorship on milk melamine scandal

kk+ via FlickrChina has been withdrawing 12 percent of its milk because it contained too high levels of melamine and is still trying to get to terms with the scandal. The Times reports about a rather unusual apology by a Chinese official for shutting up about the scandal for six weeks during the Beijing Olympics.

Wang Jianguo, a city government spokesman, revealed that Sanlu had approached them for help in managing the media response on August 2 – just six days before the games opened. Mr Wang did not say whether the municipality complied with the media control request, but he did say that the problem was not reported to the Hebei provincial government until September 9.
Officials had not thought through the consequences of their actions, he admitted. “The bungling of the best opportunity to report the handling of the issue caused much harm to people’s safety, and seriously affected the image of the party and the government,” he said. Mr Wang also voiced “deep guilt and pain” at the scandal.

That is of course the correct thing to do and show how much China has been changing. Not so long ago it would be unthinkable people on the level of Wang Jianguo would publicly apologies. Officials would be removed silently from their position, if they made this kind of mistakes, but explaining it to the outside world, that is very new and encouraging.

Update: More details at Reuters.

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