China Watch Blog

China Watch Blog has learnt that China National Salt Industry Corporation (CNSIC), the country’s biggest salt producer, on Tuesday launched a plan to reduce the nation’s salt consumption, as Chinese eat about three times the amount of salt recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO).

CNSIC General Manager Mao Qingguo said the company would implement an action plan to develop low-sodium salt products and establish a uniform standard for salt substitutes to promote the healthy use of salt.

According to CNSIC data, Chinese directly consume 5.5 million tonnes of salt annually and the salt output reaches about 9 million tonnes, including about 50,000 tonnes of low-sodium salt.

In other words, each Chinese person consumes an average of at least 15 grams of salt every day, compared with five grams recommended by the WHO.

Excess intake of sodium chloride is believed to be greatly associated with cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure and other chronic diseases, which lead to about 85 percent of deaths in China every year, said Zeng Yixin, president of Peking Union Medical College.

Earlier last month, the Ministry of Health and other government departments called for reducing China’s per capita daily salt consumption to below 9 grams as part of chronic diseases prevention and control efforts.

China Watch Blog has learnt that information about an underground plant which produced tainted bean sprouts in Qingpu District earned a 50,000 yuan (US$7,937) reward for an anonymous informant in February, the largest sum paid for a food scandal tip-off in the city so far, Shanghai Food Safety Office said.

The authority is keen to have the public help them uncover food safety issues and anonymity will be protected and, indeed, encouraged, officials said at the launch of a national food safety week.

“Industry insiders and informants can usually give valuable information, but they are afraid that their identities will be exposed,” said Gu Zhenhua, vice director of the food safety office.

“So we encourage anonymous tipsters. In the bean sprout case, we don’t know the tipster’s identity. After confirming all the information the person offered, the 50,000 yuan was transferred to an account designated by the person.

“We don’t need or want to know the tipster’s identity but want information about food scandals,” Gu said.

All the contaminated bean sprouts have been destroyed and suspects are under investigation by the Qingpu prosecutors’ office.

Shanghai is offering rewards of between 500 and 200,000 yuan for food scandal tip-offs.

Officials said ensuring food safety was a tough task in the city and the government was using all measures to deal with food safety cases to protect people’s health. Any food safety crime would receive the toughest punishment, the government has said.

At present, about 80 percent of local food producers are small companies, making monitoring and supervision difficult. There are about 180,000 to 200,000 food production or sales companies in the city, but only 4,000 food safety officials.

“We want all residents to participate in the campaign against food safety crime for the sake of public health,” Gu said.

China Watch Blog has learnt that China’s advertising spending grew 14.9 percent last year to 347.2 billion yuan (US$54.3 billion) as Internet advertising recorded the largest annual gain, industry data showed.

Overall advertising spending was slightly lower from a previous estimate of 347.5 billion yuan and television took up 56.8 percent share of the overall spending, according to figures released today by GroupM China, a media investment management firm under advertising giant WPP.

The figures were based on market data excluding discount rates across all media sectors.

Internet advertising income surged 57.6 percent year on year to 51.3 billion yuan with the rise of online shopping sites and social media platforms.

However, TV advertising sales added a below-average 10.7 percent to 197.2 billion yuan annually due to restrictive policies by state regulators.

Newspaper advertising income grew the smallest at 4.2 percent to 46.2 billion yuan.

Earlier, GroupM’s forecast advertising revenue would rise 16.9 percent this year to 406.3 billion yuan.