Public outrage is mounting in China over allegations that a major state-owned food company has been cutting costs by using the same tankers to carry fuel and cooking oil – without cleaning them in between.

The scandal, which implicates China’s largest grain storage and transport company Sinograin, and private conglomerate Hopefull Grain and Oil Group, has raised concerns of food contamination in a country rocked in recent decades by a string of food and drug safety scares – and evoked harsh criticism from Chinese state media.

It was an “open secret” in the transport industry that the tankers were doing double duty, according to a report in the state-linked outlet Beijing News last week, which alleged that trucks carrying certain fuel or chemical liquids were also used to transport edible liquids such as cooking oil, syrup and soybean oil, without proper cleaning procedures.

  • @UnderpantsWeevil
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    -84 months ago

    In their willingness to faithfully implement the central economic plan, just like every other economic participant.

    “Capitalism is when people have different amounts of money” is definitely a take, though.

    • Flying SquidM
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      74 months ago

      Please do show me where in Captial or the Manifesto Marx approves of the existence of private owners of corporations to get extremely rich. You can just quote a passage or two. I don’t remember any of that from when I read them, but perhaps you can fill me in on how the workers are controlling his means of production.

      • @[email protected]
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        84 months ago

        You might as well be talking to a wall. There’s no way in hell you’re going to change a tankie’s mind… I live in China and everybody here knows it’s a capitalist society. The five year plans exist mostly on paper. The government will implement it in the sense of making specific grants available for specific target industries.

        As a result you’ll have a ton of startups in that field popping up, and then slowly burning through the funds over the next 4 years, rinse & repeat. A few companies make it, most just take the cash and die.

        They also change the plans often enough, in reaction to the markets. You know, just like any capitalist regime would.

        • Flying SquidM
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          74 months ago

          Oh I know, I just like watching them twist themselves into pretzels trying to make these silly claims.

      • @TokenBoomer
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        4 months ago

        Not explicitly, but implicitly it’s in the link from SSJMarx.

        Marx from the “German Ideology:”

        It is only possible to achieve real liberation in the real world and by employing real means, that slavery cannot be abolished without the steam-engine and the mule and spinning-jenny, serfdom cannot be abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity. “Liberation” is an historical and not a mental act, and it is brought about by historical conditions, the development of industry, commerce, agriculture, the conditions of intercourse.

        And Engels from the “Principles of Communism:”

        Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke? No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society. In all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity.

        • Flying SquidM
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          34 months ago

          You do know they wrote those passages in the 1800s, right?

          So how long, exactly, was it supposed to take to eliminate the multi-billionaires that didn’t exist yet and didn’t even exist in China until relatively recently?

          • @TokenBoomer
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            -14 months ago

            It takes as long as it takes. There is no timetable for social change.

            • Flying SquidM
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              24 months ago

              Got it. As long as China eliminates the multi-billionaires and private companies within the next three billion years, it will not be a capitalist country.

              • @TokenBoomer
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                4 months ago

                Unironically, yes. It’s the INTENTION that matters. Are they striving for communism, or is it just lip service? Only by their actions can we tell.

                • Flying SquidM
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                  24 months ago

                  Ah yes, good intentions. I seem to remember something about a road being associated with those.

                  • @TokenBoomer
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                    04 months ago

                    As opposed to the flooded dirt road western capitalism is leading us.

        • Flying SquidM
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          44 months ago

          Am I supposed to read the whole thing to find the defense of the billionaires that didn’t exist when he wrote that or do you feel like quoting me a relevant passage rather than make me waste my time to see something that isn’t there?

          • @UnderpantsWeevil
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            -44 months ago

            Am I supposed to read the whole thing

            Not just that chapter, either. You should read the whole book.

            • Flying SquidM
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              44 months ago

              In other words, you can’t quote the relevant passage where an ever-increasing number of billionaires who control the means of production is a feature of communism.

              • @UnderpantsWeevil
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                -34 months ago

                you can’t quote the relevant passage

                The accumulation of labor power through central management of the capital stock isn’t something you’re going to understand or accept as a single sentence.

                You want this to be like the Bible, where you can just quote John 3:16 and nod sagely, as though it should be revealed wisdom.

                But the material is more complex than a bronze age scripture verse.

                That said, capital accommodation is one stage of economic development. This is the chapter which covers the process of economic development. At some point, you do need a handful of central administrators to oversee productive use of capital. And these administrators will become rich as a result.

                Marxism doesn’t refute this process, it leverages the process towards Socialist accumulation.

                • Flying SquidM
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                  34 months ago

                  I’m pretty sure, based on the Marx I have read, that a pillar of Marxism and communism is that the workers control the means of production, but you have taught me that what is meant by “the workers control the means of production” is “one multibillionaire controls the means of production for tens of thousands of workers.” So thank you, I had no idea that all this time, the U.S. was a communist country too.

                  • @UnderpantsWeevil
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                    -34 months ago

                    a pillar of Marxism and communism is that the workers control the means of production

                    Through workers councils and vanguard parties that govern the country.

                    That doesn’t preclude any one person from accumulating more currency than another.

                    one multibillionaire controls the means of production

                    He doesn’t control it. He administers it on behalf of the workers’ state.

                    I had no idea

                    If you read the whole book, rather than panicking at being handed a single chapter, you’ll know more