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Unsolved riddles

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-18 07:53

Perhaps these are nothing to be surprised at. We know some others take them for granted. But, we just cannot. To us, they are way too weird to be credible.

People say nothing comes out of nothing. These days that time-honored common sense turns shaky in the face of what we have witnessed.

First we heard about bribes without takers - American companies pleaded guilty of offering bribes to Chinese partners, while the Chinese flatly denied receiving any. We cannot but suspect there is an American plot to denigrate our national industries. Though we have trouble understanding why those American firms risk their own reputation and subject themselves to heavy fines doing that.

Now we are faced with something equally perplexing.

Days back, 615 out of 731 children who had undergone medical screening in a lead poisoning scandal in Fengxiang, Shaanxi province were found to have "excessive amounts of blood lead." Local authorities identified lead release from the nearby smelter as the "main cause," though "other causes" were not excluded. An apology was offered, and promises made to help relocate villagers and fund medical treatment.

At that very same press conference, however, the local environmental watchdog announced something quite the opposite. The environment monitoring station report said the lead content in the water (ground and surface) and soil is up to State standards; so is it in the waste-water, waste gas and other discharges. Of course, there are exceptions, it said. It quoted the firm's own account as saying there were only three occasions when the release of pollutants exceeded official limits. But, only three times.

This is indeed confusing to us. State standards are supposed to guarantee safety levels of industrial discharges released into the environment. If those standards can be trusted, the smelter should be innocent. How come it was designated the "main cause"?

Sources with the smelter are now shifting the blame to "other factors." Which they said may include lead in foods, toys, paints, automobile emissions, and so on. But, we have seen no evidence that the more than 600 children are particularly exposed to those factors.

Since the local environmental authorities have come up with solid evidence exonerating the "main cause," we are, like in the commercial bribes scandal, again all at sea.

Yet as believers of common sense and causality, we grudge resorting to the supernatural. Nor do we think it is fair to blame extraterrestrial beings for accepting bribes from American firms, or poisoning the children in Fengxiang.

We are only curious, and believe that such riddles should not remain unsolved.

Will anybody bother to give convincing answers?

(China Daily 08/18/2009 page8)