The civil affair authority should seek a balance between heteronomy and autonomy when supervising trade associations to behave themselves, says an editorial in South Metropolis Daily. Excerpts:

The Civil Affairs Ministry decided to create an assessment system to evaluate the performance of trade associations and to form a blacklist to punish offending organizations and encourage trade associations to improve their transparency and self-discipline.

Some trade associations indeed have become hotbeds of corruption. They use every chance they get to boost their power and profits. A complete industrial credibility administration system should keep a balance between heteronomy and autonomy. If not, the credibility administration system may cause a credibility crisis as well.

The civil affair authority should consider awarding the credibility associations the power to create an environment that forces associations to behave themselves. The power to establish the blacklist should rest with civil affair authorities, and they should give the public a say in the assessment process to prevent powerful trade organizations from interfering with the assessment of their performances.

Take the dairy industry association as an example. Consumers strongly feel the association represents the interests of dairy enterprises. However, the organization still has the power to set quality standards and inspection rules of dairy products, which is vitally important to the public's health. After the melamine scandal erupted in China in 2008, affecting almost all famous domestic dairy enterprises, the dairy association, instead of reflecting on the cause of the scandal, lowered the national quality standards for dairy products to ensure the protein contents of the dairy products can meet the standards without adding other chemicals.

The association also brazenly claims the China's dairy product quality is the best it has ever been, even though domestic consumers are spurning dairy products made at home.

This association has failed its responsibility completely. The civil affairs administration should tighten its control on such irresponsible organizations first and determine the best model of discipline in such cases.