Why Russians are not protesting against the war

Since the Ukraine war began, the West has asked why Russians aren’t marching on the streets. The answer is simple

Sergey Smirnov
5 October 2022

Russian law enforcement has targeted the very initiatives

 that call for protests, leaving few routes for mobilisation |
(c) Nikolay Vinokurov / Alamy Stock Photo. All rights reserved

The Kremlin’s war on Ukraine, and especially the mobilisation announced in September, are a real shock for Russian society.

Even if you factor in pro-government opinion surveys, there are millions of people in Russia who are dissatisfied with what is happening. And the people who most disagree with the Russian government are young people. According to the most conservative estimates, the number of under-25s against the war is equivalent to the number of people of all ages who support it.

But why aren’t these people out on the streets of Russian cities?

This is one of the West’s most asked questions since the invasion of Ukraine in February. The simplest answer is this: because Russians support the war and Russian president Vladimir Putin

It’s an argument used frequently by Western politicians, and one that is used to justify closing international borders to Russian citizens. ‘Fight inside your own country’ is a familiar slogan. Eastern European politicians and citizens make this point particularly often. Which is understandable: they feel the pain of Ukraine more closely, remember life under Soviet occupation and fear a Russian invasion themselves.

In fact, to understand the absence of active protests in Russia, an analogy may help.
Soviet-style repression and rigged elections

In terms of ideology and repression, the Putin regime is similar to the Soviet regime and even tries to use elements of the Stalinist Soviet Union. Since the war began, laws have been adopted in Russia that can result in up to ten years in prison for soldiers surrendering to Ukraine’s armed forces.

If you spread ‘fake news’ – that is, any information about the war that contradicts the official line – you face up to 15 years in prison. In Russia, for even using the word ‘war’ (rather than the officially sanctioned ‘special operation’) you can face punishment.

Mass political protests were never a regular feature in the Soviet Union. While they certainly took place, the Soviet authorities severely suppressed them.

The debate over whether Vladimir Putin is or isn't a dictator misses the point |
Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin Pool/Alamy Live News

During the 20 years of his rule, Putin has built a repressive apparatus that is almost as effective as that of the Soviet Union. (The media outlet where I'm chief editor, Mediazona, covers it in detail.) Indeed, it was in the late 1970s that Putin began to work for Soviet state security, and this time period of the Soviet enterprise – from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s – and the regime in East Germany, is probably a role model for the current Russian president.

But as well as the wholesale suppression of dissent, the blocking of independent media and the persecution of journalists, there is another detail that makes Russian society similar to the Soviet one. The Russian state has completely removed citizens from political life, swapping this absence of involvement for stability and a gradual increase in living standards, at least in large cities.

Also, it’s important to realise that, in Russia, there have been no elections in the Western sense of the word for a long time. When you see an election result for Putin and United Russia, Russia’s ruling party, remember the rigged results of the recent fake referendums in southern and eastern Ukraine, where allegedly more than 90% of citizens voted to join the Russian Federation.

(By the way, this is surprisingly similar to the voting results in the Baltic states after the Soviet occupation of 1940. That year, allegedly more than 90% of the inhabitants of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia voted to join the USSR.)

In short, it makes no sense to talk about popular support for the Putin regime on the basis of election results.

It’s true, Russians are afraid to protest after 20 years of repression. Indeed, they prefer to avoid any contact with the Russian state altogether

Opinion polling data – although not always reliable – is another source of information about what Russian society thinks. Yet independent sociologists speak of a growing number of people who refuse to answer pollsters’ questions. Following the invasion of Ukraine, Russian sociologists have even suggested that the percentage of people contacted who agree to answer questions is as low as 5%.

It gets more complicated if you agree to answer the pollsters’ questions. For example, if you do not support the Russian invasion, how do you answer the question of whether you support Russia’s military actions in Ukraine – when there’s a chance you may face a punishment for speaking out, from a fine to a prison sentence.

So, it’s true, Russians are afraid to protest after 20 years of repression. Indeed, they prefer to avoid any contact with the Russian state altogether. At the same time, despite the huge salaries on offer (up to 4,000 euros per month), the Russian army has failed to find a sufficient number of volunteers for the war in Ukraine. And this is after the Russian state and propaganda have called for volunteers.

The Russian authorities have long taught their citizens that street protests don’t work – and could make things worse.

2020: protests in support of Khabarovsk governor Sergey Furgal captured public attention in Russia |
(c) ITAR-TASS News Agency / Alamy Stock Photo. All rights reserved


In 2020, tens of thousands of residents of Khabarovsk, in Russia’s far east, took to the streets to protest against the arrest – which was largely seen as politically motivated – of the regional governor, Sergei Furgal. Two years earlier, 70% of the region’s inhabitants had voted for him in the gubernatorial elections – despite the authorities and Furgal himself asking them to vote for his opponent.

But the Russian authorities defiantly ignored the public, and the thousand-strong marches simply faded away. The authorities did not make any concessions, they sent another governor to the region, and he won the next election with the help of massive voting fraud.

In today’s Russia, with its million law enforcement officers, protesting is just as scary as it was in the Soviet Union. So people choose other forms of protest, including emigration.

Those who left Russia after mobilisation was announced were frightened of either dying in the army or ending up in prison if they refused to fight. For many of these people, protesting on the street was not an alternative – it was safer to flee. Especially since those who did go out to openly protest in large cities were handed summons for mobilisation. Modern Russia, just like the Soviet Union, considers military service as a form of punishment.

Everyone who criticises Russians for their cowardice, unwillingness to fight for their rights should remember: Russia looks increasingly like the Soviet Union. That’s why people aren’t protesting.

China’s Marginalized Millions

How Beijing’s Failure to Invest in Rural Workers Hurts Economic Growth

By Scott Rozelle and Matthew Boswell

October 5, 2022

A child lying amid condemned migrant dwellings on the outskirts of Beijing, August 2017 

 Thomas Peter / Reuters

One often hears the Chinese Communist Party lauded for “lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty,” as the expression usually goes. And there is no denying that the CCP deserves credit for that historic achievement. Less remarked on, however, is the plight of the hundreds of millions of Chinese people living on low incomes in the country’s rural areas, facing few prospects for advancement. China’s rural inhabitants are not living in poverty, but the CCP provides them with almost no means for social mobility—or any mobility at all, owing to the restrictive hukou residential permitting system.

This substantial subset of the population poses a major long-term obstacle to China’s continued economic growth, just as consequential as more familiar factors, such as the country’s “zero COVID” policy, regulatory crackdowns, and ballooning debt. Low-skilled workers once powered the manufacturing and construction booms that led to China’s phenomenal rise. But decades of discriminatory policies have trapped hundreds of millions of people in rural areas, cut off from educational and employment opportunities.

This presents a policy conundrum for the CCP. Even if rural, low-skilled workers could more easily relocate to large cities, they would struggle to compete in the labor markets there, owing to deficits in their education. And it would take a long time to build a reliable pool of skilled workers in rural areas by spending more on education, especially since doing so would require forms of economic redistribution that might be risky for the CCP. There are no easy answers to China’s rural human capital problem, which is likely to affect the country’s growth prospects for decades to come.

Enforcing a policy that is almost unheard of among the world’s countries, China divides its people from birth into two categories: urban and rural. This classification, codified in a residence permit, or hukou, typically stays with individuals for life and determines what type of education, health care, and other social services they can access. As early as the twenty-first century BC, ancient Chinese leaders used household registration systems to aid taxation and conscription. But the system in its contemporary form came into being in 1958, after a decade in which industrialization had led to such rapid urbanization that the CCP had grown concerned about the stability of the country’s food supply. Although the new system was designed to prevent the diversion of labor and other resources from China’s agricultural sector, the government soon restricted access to certain types of education and state welfare services to people with urban hukou status, and inequality between urbanites and rural residents deepened. Today, approximately 800 million people in China hold a rural residence permit.

In the 1980s, when China’s economy first began to take off, the country’s bottomless supply of low-skilled, rural workers represented a comparative advantage. Chinese leaders’ efforts to turn their vast, impoverished country into a middle-income state required a labor force that was numerate, literate, and disciplined. And massive expansions of primary and lower secondary schools in the 1980s ensured that most of the young people entering China’s workforce possessed basic arithmetic and reading skills and were accustomed to strict discipline. This education, rudimentary though it was, enabled hundreds of millions of workers to secure low-wage, low-skilled jobs in the burgeoning manufacturing and construction sectors during that era, turning China into “the factory of the world.”

In the early years of this century, the supply of cheap labor from the countryside began to dwindle, and wages began to rise steadily. Manufacturers responded by transferring the lowest-skilled jobs overseas and by investing in automation. Meanwhile, by the early 2010s, China had built most of the highways, railways, ports, and other major infrastructure projects it needed. Since 2013, Chinese government data show that manufacturing and construction employment has flatlined.

Where are low-skilled Chinese workers going? Official statistics indicate that the fastest-growing sector of China’s economy over the past decade has been the informal service sector. Today, nearly 60 percent of China’s nonagricultural workforce can be found in the informal sector, up from only 40 percent in 2005. These are the delivery people, nannies, street hawkers, food-stall workers, and bicycle repair mechanics that Chinese Premier Li Keqiang was referring to in a 2020 speech when he bluntly asserted that some 600 million people in China earn less than 1,000 yuan per month (about $5 per day), placing them below the World Bank’s poverty line for upper-middle-income countries such as China. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic decimated the informal service sector, official statistics showed that wage growth for these informal workers had slowed to a crawl. During the pandemic, real wages for these workers have fallen in absolute terms.

In seeking to sustain growth over the long term, China’s leaders rightly emphasize the need to shift toward consumption growth to substitute for declining investment-led growth. But having a large informal workforce with stagnating wages is incompatible with this vision. The reason for this is twofold. First, and most obviously, slow wage growth leaves people with limited disposable income. Without the benefits and social protections associated with formal, salaried work, informal workers must save their money to offset the risk of income shocks due to job losses or health emergencies. Second, China’s savings rate was already high by international standards due to the country’s weak social safety net. With as much as half of China’s labor force in precarious informal employment, the government’s options for spurring demand are limited.


When China’s economy first began to take off, the country’s supply of low-skilled, rural workers was a comparative advantage.

If China’s low-skilled workers could find higher-skilled work, this would help the country progress toward its economic development goals. Unfortunately, decades of underinvestment in rural human capital have left many of China’s rural laborers without the skills they need to compete in a modern labor market. Average educational attainment in China is low by international standards, almost exclusively due to the lagging performance of rural cohorts. A sizable majority of rural workers—89 percent, according to a large 2014 study—lack a high school degree.

Although the government has expanded access to secondary education in rural areas in recent years, spending on a per-student basis still lags far behind that of urban schools, with implications for the quality of education that rural students receive. For example, in 2015, the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, which administers a reading comprehension exam to students in dozens of countries, found that rural students in China had the lowest average scores worldwide.

Rural education matters because, due to decades of declining fertility rates in Chinese cities, over 70 percent of China’s children today live in rural areas. Many of their parents have relocated to cities to work, but without formal employment, they are unlikely to acquire the urban hukou they need to enroll their children in high-quality, urban schools. The increase in informal employment in China has implications not just for the informal workers themselves, who have little access to state welfare services, but also for the children they were forced to leave behind, enrolled in rural schools where it will be difficult to gain the academic skills required to succeed in high-skilled jobs.


Perhaps even more concerning, rural schoolchildren are far more likely than their urban counterparts to experience developmental delays and other health conditions, including anemia, vision problems, and intestinal worms, which, left untreated, can affect their learning ability. And recent data on the economic outlook of China’s rural areas suggest that families living there may face increasing economic challenges due to COVID-19.

Just as striking is a comparison with the economies of other countries that reached similar levels of economic development in the past. Research on Ireland, Israel, South Korea, and Taiwan from the 1970s to the 1990s shows that their high school attainment rates were already relatively high when they became middle-income countries. High school and college education are typically critical for the highly skilled technical and office jobs that form the foundation of a high-income economy. Although China’s average educational attainment is increasing, it is still lower than other countries at comparable per capita income levels. If Chinese workers continue to find it challenging to transition from low-skilled to high-skilled jobs, it will potentially undermine China’s transition to a high-income, high-skilled economy.
RESKILLING RURAL CHINA

The CCP’s current policies to eradicate poverty and revitalize rural areas do not really address these challenges. A national antipoverty campaign that concluded in 2020 amounted to the state providing large payments to impoverished citizens through subsidies, tax waivers, resettlement, and cash transfers. But most of the hundreds of millions of rural Chinese people who are increasingly shut out of China’s formal economy are not, in fact, living in poverty—and such measures will do little to help them become more competitive in an increasingly modern economy.

There are signs that China’s leadership is shifting gears to address the problems of this much larger low-income population. Beginning in 2014, for example, the state relaxed hukou restrictions so that more people from rural areas could legally settle in cities. The problem is that rural people are still barred from large, prosperous cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, where jobs pay more, there is more economic dynamism and opportunity, social services such as education and health care are of higher quality, and the future is generally brighter. And if millions of low-skilled workers congregate in smaller, less well-off cities where there are fewer jobs and poorer schools and health services, their presence might slow development in these communities even further.

The CCP could decide to expand social security for low-income people, encouraging them to save less and spend more. But genuinely addressing the inequalities between rural and urban communities would require significant spending on low-income populations, possibly accompanied by cuts to the benefits currently enjoyed by those in urban areas. Expanding entitlements on this scale will be highly challenging in an era of slow growth and high debt loads. And like many redistributive policies, curbing the preferential treatment of the urban middle and upper classes could be politically unpalatable. In the final analysis, the urban population is the main constituent of the CCP. While the CCP was willing to impose intense COVID lockdowns on large cities, these were widely understood to be short-term measures undertaken at a time of crisis. Implementing redistributive policies that would shift urban entitlements to rural residents would be a political impossibility for the Chinese government.
NO SIMPLE SOLUTIONS

There are no easy answers to the problem of China’s increasingly underemployed rural workers. One in every nine people on the earth lives in rural China. Education, health, productivity, and employment outcomes for this group are lower than many people realize, and measures to address the problem are complex and expensive and, even if successfully implemented tomorrow, would not pay off for many years. In the meantime, no analysis of China’s growth prospects is complete without considering the scope of this rural human capital problem and assessing China’s efforts to mitigate it.

If we assume the CCP cannot make much progress solving the problem, there will continue to be two Chinas: a relatively vibrant one composed of the large cities in a handful of coastal provinces and a backward one in the vast rural interior that is heavily dependent on proceeds from the central government to guarantee livelihoods. The only difference is that moving forward, the economic pie will not be growing at the same pace as before. The days of fast growth are likely over. Expectations of real gains in livelihoods among China’s large, increasingly shiftless rural population will be much harder to fulfill in an era of slower growth. Managing these rural dwellers will involve a patchwork of central government transfers, inefficient investments to keep workers busy, and a costly expansion of the state’s coercive power to keep everyone in line.

This unwelcome burden arrives just as Chinese President Xi Jinping has embarked on an ambitious bid to outcompete the United States in the next generation of leading technologies and to increase the world’s reliance on China’s manufacturing and technological prowess while reducing China’s reliance on the rest of the world. That is a tall order in the best of times. To achieve this vision in an era of slow growth, China’s leaders will need to marshal all the country’s resources as efficiently as possible. The presence of several hundred million underemployed people over the next 20 to 30 years dims the likelihood of success, because paying off and controlling this segment of society will divert increasingly scarce resources from the dynamic sectors that Xi depends on in order to bring about his ambitious agenda. In this way, the same rural millions who once propelled China’s emergence as a great economic power may delay, perhaps indefinitely, the realization of Xi’s vision.

POPULAR SELF EXPROPRIATION

Outraged depositors, some armed, storm four Lebanese banks over withdrawal limits


People gather outside a Byblos Bank branch where an armed depositor took hostages according to the Depositors’ Association, in Tyre, Lebanon, on October 4, 2022. (Reuters)
Lebanon crisis

Reuters, Beirut
Published: 04 October ,2022: 01:59 PM GSTUpdated: 04 October ,2022: 03:22 PM GST

Outraged depositors, at least two of them armed, stormed four commercial banks across Lebanon on Tuesday over withdrawal limits imposed on most clients throughout the country’s financial meltdown.

Cases of bank hold-ups have been snowballing across Lebanon as the population grows exasperated over informal capital controls that banks have imposed since an economic downturn began in 2019.

On Tuesday morning, a Lebanese man armed with a pistol and a grenade entered the Chtaura branch of BLC Bank, demanding access to his $24,000 in savings, according to Depositors’ Outcry, a group campaigning for angry depositors.

For the latest headlines, follow our Google News channel online or via the app.

The group told Reuters in a statement that the man, identified as Ali al-Saheli, was himself in deep debt and also needed to wire money to his son, who was studying in Ukraine.

“He had been trying to sell his kidney,” the statement said.

Security forces later entered the bank and arrested al-Saheli before he could access any money, the group said.

BLC had no immediate comment for Reuters.

Also on Tuesday, a group of people employed at a state power station in Lebanon’s north stormed the First National Bank Branch in the port city of Tripoli, according to witnesses.

They were angry over delays in withdrawing their salaries and fees they were being charged for the process, said their union representative Talal Hajer from outside the bank.

In a third incident, an armed depositor took hostages at Byblos Bank in the southern city of Tyre, according to the Depositors’ Association, another advocacy group.

It said he was carrying a pistol and demanding access to his savings amounting to $44,000.

After negotiations with the bank, he agreed to take 350 million Lebanese pounds in cash - worth nearly $9,000 at Tuesday’s market rate - which he handed to a relative before being taken into custody, the Depositors’ Association said.

There was no immediate comment from Byblos Bank.

A fourth depositor staged a sit-in at IBL Bank in the Beirut suburb of Hazmieh, saying he would not leave until he was granted unfettered access to his account, Depositors’ Outcry said. It was not immediately clear if he was armed.

Last month, a spree of seven hold-ups in a single week saw the banking association announce a closure for about a week.

Five incidents have already rocked banks this week. On Monday, Lebanese depositor Zaher Khawaja and some associates managed to withdraw $11,750 from an account with more than $700,000 at the Haret Hreik branch of BLOM Bank.

BLOM said he was not armed and that it would investigate the incident.

AMERICAN ANTI IMPERIALISM

A Message from Professor Noam Chomsky

Support Antiwar.com

by Professor Noam Chomsky Posted onOctober 05, 2022

Dear Antiwar.com Reader,

Given the state of world affairs today, I am sure you are as concerned as I am about the prospects for peace in our time. With Russia escalating its invasion of Ukraine to dangerous heights, the US undermining the prospects for diplomatic settlement by insisting on a war to weaken Russia, the US and other NATO powers sending billions of dollars in weapons, and related developments with far-reaching consequences for us all, we find ourselves in dire times, which call for peaceful solutions, not more war tactics from superpowers.

Media outlets worldwide decry the atrocities of the war in Ukraine perpetrated by Russian President Putin, yet western commentary typically avoids relevant historical context and discusses no alternatives beyond the escalation of this destructive war.

On national television, U.S. President Biden openly calls for the removal of President Putin from Russia and continues his demands for additional tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine as the only option. The mainstream media could not be more accommodating to this narrative, despite so much of the story that remains untold.

The war machine is in full force as our military industrial complex benefits from escalating war. As you may know, the United States is the largest arms dealer in the world – and in history. Yet most Americans either are unaware of this shocking fact or may be too distracted by the mainstream media promoting more military aid to Ukraine and harsher sanctions on Russia while ignoring prospects for peaceful diplomatic settlement.

This one-sided focus on war and punishment, sidelining prospects for peace, has bitter consequences well beyond Ukraine. A massive hunger crisis looms for millions of innocent citizens, as essential food staples such as wheat, corn and cooking oil, along with fertilizer for virtually every kind of crop, are choked off from Ukraine and Russia, the primary source of these essentials for many countries, including Egypt, Lebanon, Nigeria, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Some steps have been taken to relieve the crisis, but what little is known indicates that they are quite inadequate. The escalating prices of oil and gas, though debilitating to millions as the cold of winter approaches, are only part of the horrifying consequences of continuing war. Even more significant is that the limited steps to deal with the imminent crisis of global warming have been displaced by major expansion of the poisoning of the environment that sustains life, a serious threat to survival. There is a narrow window in which this existential crisis can be addressed. To close it is beyond criminal. Meanwhile the threat of nuclear war is visibly increasing.

The great powers must come to an accommodation to deal jointly with the extraordinary crises that we face. Failure to do will lead to catastrophe for all.

Meanwhile, most American citizens remain completely ignorant of the history of the region, which is seriously distorted in media discussion. To take just one example, the US press still refuses, by and large, to report on the militant position of the US in this conflict in past years, established officially on September 1, 2021, in the Joint Statement of the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership.

Throughout there have been opportunities for peaceful settlement that might have avoided the criminal invasion and later brought it to a peaceful end. We cannot of course know whether they could have been successfully pursued. The only way to find out is to try. Antiwar.com has been almost alone in regularly providing essential information about these critical matters. To take just one very recent example, last April there were Ukrainian-Russian negotiations under Turkish auspices. Clearly a very significant development. It was barely reported, except by Antiwar.com, which broke the critical information that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Ukraine to say that the West (meaning US-UK) did not favor negotiations, followed by US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who presumably delivered his usual message that the US wants the war to continue so as to weaken Russia severely.

Those of us who are, rightly, dismayed by the overwhelming focus on war rhetoric by our leaders and mainstream media, know that it is always possible to seek a way to peace. Media censorship and one-sided narratives prevail in the western world, but are especially bad in the United States. Antiwar.com stands as a critically significant exception.

I read Antiwar.com regularly because it has served as a reliable source for news on a daily basis, independent and unfiltered. I hope you will join me in supporting this unflinching source for the truth. Unlike corporate and state-sanctioned news outlets, Antiwar.com is a modest team of independent columnists and journalists supported by readers like you, who depend on them to report real stories every day.

Thank you for your continued support for Antiwar.com, and for peace in our world.

Sincerely,

Professor Noam Chomsky

 

The Global South’s Revolt against Biden’s Russia Policy

by Ted Galen Carpenter Posted onOctober 05, 2022

President Biden’s boast shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that the world stood united against Moscow’s aggression is increasingly detached from reality. Indeed, it has reached the point of deserving mockery. Walter Russell Mead, a scholar at the Hudson Institute, provided a devastating, early assessment of how Washington’s effort to isolate Russia was failing. "The West has never been more closely aligned. It has also rarely been more alone. Allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization plus Australia and Japan are united in revulsion against Vladimir Putin’s war and are cooperating with the most sweeping sanctions since World War II. The rest of the world, not so much."

In other words, only Washington’s network of security dependents signed on to its policy. Even a cursory look at a global map confirms that Mead’s observation remains valid. Outside of NATO and traditional U.S. partners in East Asia, virtually no governments have imposed economic sanctions on Russia, despite enormous pressure from the Biden administration. That void is graphic with respect to Central and South Asia, Latin America, and Africa – the developing countries in the so-called Global South.

African countries especially fail to see any advantage for themselves in supporting the West’s policy. Although Washington insists that repelling Russia’s aggression against Ukraine is essential to preserve the "rules based, liberal international order," governments and populations in Africa see matters differently. To them, the war looks more like a mundane power struggle between Russia and a Western client state. As one African scholar put it: "many in Africa and the rest of the Global South do not regard – and never have regarded – the liberal international order as particularly liberal or international."

More tangible economic interests reinforce Africa’s inclination toward neutrality. A June 3 New York Times analysis concluded succinctly: "A meeting on Friday between the head of the African Union and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia highlighted the acute needs each one hopes the other can fill: Africa needs food, and the Kremlin needs allies." An Africa heavily dependent on food and energy imports that Russia controls is not about to antagonize Moscow.

There also is trouble for Washington elsewhere in the Global South. Despite being in Washington’s sphere of influence since the early years of the Monroe Doctrine, even major portions of Latin America balk at waging economic war against Russia. Both Brazil and Mexico – the region’s two most important political and economic players – continue to dissent. Brazil’s resistance to the administration’s anti-Russia policy has become evident again when the UN Security Council voted on a resolution condemning Moscow’s annexation of four territories in Ukraine following sham referendums there.

Since it was obvious that Russia would veto that resolution, it would have been easy for Brazil and all other members of the Council to vote in favor of the measure. That stance would have signaled discontent, if not outrage, at the Kremlin’s land grab, which had significantly escalated the Ukraine crisis. Instead, Brazil joined with India and China to cast an abstention, emphasizing the government’s continuing neutrality with respect to the Russia-Ukraine war.

Washington’s inability to enlist India and China in a common front to actively oppose Moscow’s actions in Ukraine, highlights the bankruptcy of US policy. Mildly negative comments from Indian and Chinese officials in September about Vladimir Putin’s policy following Ukraine’s surprisingly successful military counteroffensive generated speculation that Beijing and Delhi were growing impatient with Putin and the disruption of the global economy that his war helped ignite. The UN Security Council vote confirmed that such speculation was decidedly premature and excessive. China and India (along with the rest of the Global South) still seem firmly committed to a stance of neutrality. And without the participation of the Global South (especially the two demographic and economic giants), there is little chance that Washington’s strategy of forcing Moscow to capitulate because of mounting economic pain can succeed.

Indeed, the Biden administration needs to worry that the Global South’s neutralist sentiment about the Russia-Ukraine war may spread to the Western bloc. There are multiple signs of fissures developing within NATO. Turkey openly advocates heightened diplomacy to end the war, rather than trying to defeat and humiliate Russia. Hungary has warned the European Union countries have "shot themselves in the lungs" by imposing sanctions on Russia, especially on energy supplies. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has pledged to "poll" Hungarian voters with respect to both proposed and current sanctions. Europeans fear a complete cut-off of Russian natural gas, leading to a winter of cold, hunger, and economic recession. That concern has grown following the mysterious sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in late September. Even before that incident, at least 10 EU members expressed opposition to price caps on Russian energy shipments, mandated by the U.S.-dominated G-7. Thus far, the EU has not implemented those caps.

Washington’s goal was to isolate Russia, making the country a pariah in the international system. That strategy clearly has failed, and absent Moscow’s use of tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the refusal of the Global South to embrace the Biden administration’s strategy likely will persist. Indeed, such neutralist sentiment now seems to be penetrating the Western bloc. Ironically, the administration’s approach may end up isolating the United States more than Russia.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 13 books and more than 1,100 articles on international affairs. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (forthcoming, November 2022).

Indian-American doctor Vivek Murthy is US representative on WHO executive board

US President Joe Biden has nominated Dr Vivek Murthy as America's representative to the World Health Organization.

Press Trust of India Washington

October 5, 2022

Joe Biden nominated Dr Vivek Murthy as US representative

of the World Health Organisation. (Image: AP/FILE)

US President Joe Biden has nominated Dr Vivek Murthy to serve as America’s representative on the executive board of the World Health Organisation.

Dr Murthy, 45, will serve in the new position alongside his continued duties as the US Surgeon General, the White House said in a statement.

He was confirmed by the US Senate in March 2021 to serve as the 21st Surgeon General of the country. He previously served as the 19th Surgeon General under President Barack Obama.

As the nation’s doctor, the Surgeon General’s mission is to help lay the foundation for a healthier country, relying on the best scientific information available to provide clear, consistent and equitable guidance and resources for the public.

"While serving as the 21st Surgeon General, Dr Murthy is focused on drawing attention to and working across government to address a number of critical public health issues, including the growing proliferation of health misinformation, the ongoing youth mental health crisis, well-being and burnout in the health worker community, and social isolation and loneliness," said the White House.

As the Vice Admiral of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, Dr Murthy also commands a uniformed service of over 6,000 dedicated public health officers, serving the most underserved and vulnerable populations.

The first Surgeon General of Indian descent, Dr Murthy, was raised in Miami and is a graduate of Harvard, the Yale School of Medicine, and the Yale School of Management, the White House said.

A renowned physician, research scientist, entrepreneur and author, he lives in Washington, DC with his wife Dr Alice Chen, and their two children, it said.

A REAL DOCTOR NOT A 'NAVY DOCTOR' AKA A CHIROPRACTOR AS TRUMP'S GOP PRESIDENTIAL DOCTOR WAS

44 European Leaders Gather in Prague. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?


Analysis by Andreas Kluth | Bloomberg
October 5, 2022 

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC - JUNE 25: The flag of the European Union is projected on helium balloon with Prague Castle in the background during the celebrations of the beginning of the Czech EU Presidency on June 25, 2022 in Prague, Czech Republic. The Czech presidency of the Council of the European Union will take place from July 1 to December 31, 2022. 

 (Photographer: Gabriel Kuchta/Getty Images Europe)


Europeans are practiced at the sort of baroque summitry that’ll take place this week in Prague, inside the castle grounds where the Thirty Years’ War started. Forty-four national leaders — including friends, frenemies and plain old enemies — are showing up for the inaugural meeting of the so-called European Political Community.

Exactly what that institution will become remains to be worked out. But the idea is to remind most Europeans (Russia and Belarus weren’t invited) that they share something loftier than a common geography — that is, ideals and a common destiny.

That’s the vision, in any case. It was conceived, as such soaring inspirations tend to be, by Emmanuel Macron, the president of France. He came to it in the conviction that all the other European structures are too flawed to help a continent torn by war, border disputes and assorted crises in energy, migration and economics.

In that assessment, Macron is right. Just drawing up a list of those other institutions gets confusing. It starts with such clubs as the Council of Europe (no relation at all to the European Council) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (which includes even non-European countries and Russia, the continent’s greatest warmonger). Right at the top, there’s the European Union. Meant to be history’s greatest-ever peace project, it’s in theory supposed to gradually integrate its member states — currently 27 — into a United States of Europe.

It doesn’t take Macron to realize that none of these groupings is flexible or strong enough to solve Europe’s biggest problems. The EU, for example, is so institutionally complex that it’s hard just to count how many presidents it has (probably about 10 ). In policy areas such as trade it may be a superpower, but in most others — notably defense — it’s a minion.

Its design flaws are legion. The EU can’t eject errant members (Hello, Hungary) and is unhelpful when a country wants to leave voluntarily (Bye, Brits). On many important issues, any rogue member can veto all decisions. On others, the EU’s treaties are ambiguous — they contain a mutual defense clause that nobody relies on, for instance, which is why all but six EU nations are also in NATO.

Yet another shortcoming of the EU is that it excludes too many European countries. Turkey officially became a candidate for accession to the bloc in 1999; it gave up any hope of joining long ago and may never stop sulking. Several Balkan countries fear that they’re in the same holding pattern. Worse, from their point of view, is that Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia — whom the EU wants to support against threats from Russia — may jump ahead of the Balkans in the queue.

Macron apparently hopes that the European Political Community will one day do better. Launched as a “soft-law” institution, it could mature into a club which members can enter as well as leave, but not obstruct or sabotage. It could also provide a continental stage for Brits, Turks, Swiss, Albanians, Georgians and all others who can’t or won’t join the EU. It’s already been decided that the Community’s next gathering will take place in Moldova.

As good as Macron’s intentions are, of course, Europe won’t stop being Europe just because it’s getting yet another institution. One country represented in Prague, Ukraine, is fighting for its very existence against a European invader. Two others, Armenia and Azerbaijan, were at war with each other just last month. Two more, Turkey and Greece, could be at any moment, with a third, Cyprus, possibly wedged between them. The North Macedonians, Albanians, Bosnians and other Balkans suspect that the European Political Community is merely Macron’s consolation prize because nobody intends to let them into the EU proper. The guests from Serbia, meanwhile, deny that those from Kosovo even have a country to represent.

So yes, it’d be easy to make fun of this continental symposium, of Macron’s megalomania in constantly proposing new paperwork monsters and of Europeans being as fractious as they’ve always been. Too easy.

A more generous view is that Macron and other European leaders are refusing — even at a time when one European, Russian President Vladimir Putin, threatens others with nuclear war — to jettison their dream of continental peace, security and harmony. This week’s convention won’t be a another Peace of Westphalia or Congress of Vienna. It won’t solve the continent’s problems, unite the divided or pacify the bellicose. But it deserves attention and support. In times such as ours, gathering in peace is so much better than not gathering at all.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.


Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering European politics. A former editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist, he is author of “Hannibal and Me.”

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

 

Wife of Vietnamese lecturer says she doesn’t believe he refused a defense lawyer

Other political prisoners had similar experiences, Dang Dang Phuoc’s wife says.

By RFA Vietnamese
2022.10.05

A file photograph of lecturer Dang Dang Phuoc, who was arrested on Sept. 8. Facebook: Dang Dang Phuoc

The wife of a music lecturer arrested in early September on charges of "conducting anti-state propaganda" says she does not believe local police claims he refused legal assistance.

On Sept. 14 the Security Investigation Agency of Dak Lak province’s Police Department sent Dang Dang Phuoc’s family a notice issued two days earlier which stated:

“During the interrogation of the accused, the Security Investigation Agency explained the rights and obligations of the accused under Article 60 of the Criminal Procedure Code 2015… and Dang Dang Phuoc did not ask for a defense [lawyer] but [chose to] protect his own interests during the investigation process.”

His wife, Le Thi Ha, told RFA she doesn’t believe the contents of the notice and said other political prisoners have also been denied lawyers with the same excuse.

 “My husband told me to hire a lawyer for him before he was arrested,” she said. “But six days after he was detained, the Security Investigation Agency issued a written notice of legal refusal and said he had changed his mind.”

“I have talked with many other families of political prisoners and learned that every family received a notice of refusal of a lawyer but when they talked to the prisoner [they discovered] the truth is not like that.”

Phuoc, 59, is a music lecturer at Dak Lak Pedagogical College in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. He often writes on Facebook about issues including education problems, human rights violations, corrupt officials and social injustice.

Police arrested him on Sept. 8 and said they would hold him for four months at least. They searched his house the same day. Phuoc was charged with "making, storing, spreading or propagating information, documents and items aimed at opposing the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,” which carries a sentence of between seven and 20 years.

State media reported that Dak Lak Provincial Police documents said: "Since 2019 until now, Dang Dang Phuoc has taken advantage of the Facebook social network to regularly compile and publish many articles and video clips containing propaganda content that distorts and opposes the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.”

Phuoc's family invited lawyer Nguyen Van Mieng from the Ho Chi Minh City Bar Association to defend him. Mieng said he completed procedures to act as Phuoc’s lawyer at Dak Lak province’s police headquarters on Sept. 12.

Mieng told RFA that while a case related to national security was being investigated the local chief procurator could decide to deny the defendant a lawyer in order to ensure the investigation's secrecy.

Phuoc’s wife said the police have not been following official procedures.

“When they arrested Phuoc, they read the arrest warrant and searched the house but did not show me or give me the arrest warrant or search warrant,” Ha said.

It is common in political cases in Vietnam to deny defendants access to their families and lawyers during the investigation, which can last at least four months. Relatives are also prohibited from seeing prisoners of conscience until the case goes to court.

Ha said she was only allowed to send blankets and warm clothes to her husband. She said the investigator in charge of the case, Hua Quoc Thuan, told her she was not allowed to provide food for her husband, even if she bought it at the detention center canteen

RFA called the number of the Security Investigation Agency provided by Thuan but no one answered.

Keep it or toss it? ‘Best Before’ labels cause confusion

By DEE-ANN DURBIN 

today

1 of 20
A customer looks at refrigerated items at a Grocery Outlet store in Pleasanton, Calif.,. on Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022. "Best before” labels are coming under scrutiny as concerns about food waste grow around the world. Manufacturers have used the labels for decades to estimate peak freshness. But “best before” labels have nothing to do with safety, and some worry they encourage consumers to throw away food that’s perfectly fine to eat. (AP Photo/Terry Chea)

As awareness grows around the world about the problem of food waste, one culprit in particular is drawing scrutiny: “best before” labels.

Manufacturers have used the labels for decades to estimate peak freshness. Unlike “use by” labels, which are found on perishable foods like meat and dairy, “best before” labels have nothing to do with safety and may encourage consumers to throw away food that’s perfectly fine to eat.

“They read these dates and then they assume that it’s bad, they can’t eat it and they toss it, when these dates don’t actually mean that they’re not edible or they’re not still nutritious or tasty,” said Patty Apple, a manager at Food Shift, an Alameda, California, nonprofit that collects and uses expired or imperfect foods.

To tackle the problem, major U.K. chains like Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer recently removed “best before” labels from prepackaged fruit and vegetables. The European Union is expected to announce a revamp to its labeling laws by the end of this year; it’s considering abolishing “best before” labels altogether.

In the U.S., there’s no similar push to scrap “best before” labels. But there is growing momentum to standardize the language on date labels to help educate buyers about food waste, including a push from big grocers and food companies and bipartisan legislation in Congress.

“I do think that the level of support for this has grown tremendously,” said Dana Gunders, executive director of ReFED, a New York-based nonprofit that studies food waste.

The United Nations estimates that 17% of global food production is wasted each year; most of that comes from households. In the U.S., as much as 35% of food available goes uneaten, ReFED says. That adds up to a lot of wasted energy — including the water, land and labor that goes into the food production — and higher greenhouse gas emissions when unwanted food goes into landfills.

There are many reasons food gets wasted, from large portion sizes to customers’ rejection of imperfect produce. But ReFED estimates that 7% of U.S. food waste — or 4 million tons annually — is due to consumer confusion over “best before” labels.

Date labels were widely adopted by manufacturers in the 1970s to answer consumers’ concerns about product freshness. There are no federal rules governing them, and manufacturers are allowed to determine when they believe their products will taste best. Only infant formula is required to have a “use by” date in the U.S.

Since 2019, the Food and Drug Administration — which regulates around 80% of U.S. food — has recommended that manufacturers use the labels “best if used by” for freshness and “use by” for perishable goods, based on surveys showing that consumers understand those phrases.

But the effort is voluntary, and the language on labels continues to vary widely, from “sell by” to “enjoy by” to “freshest before.” A survey released in June by researchers at the University of Maryland found at least 50 different date labels used on U.S. grocery shelves and widespread confusion among customers.

“Most people believe that if it says ‘sell by,’ ‘best by’ or ‘expiration,’ you can’t eat any of them. That’s not actually accurate,” said Richard Lipsit, who owns a Grocery Outlet store in Pleasanton, California, that specializes in discounted food.

Lipsit said milk can be safely consumed up to a week after its “use by” date. Gunders said canned goods and many other packaged foods can be safely eaten for years after their “best before” date. The FDA suggests consumers look for changes in color, consistency or texture to determine if foods are all right to eat.

“Our bodies are very well equipped to recognize the signs of decay, when food is past its edible point,” Gunders said. “We’ve lost trust in those senses and we’ve replaced it with trust in these dates.”

Some U.K. grocery chains are actively encouraging customers to use their senses. Morrisons removed “use by” dates from most store-brand milk in January and replaced them with a “best before” label. Co-op, another grocery chain, did the same to its store-brand yogurts.

It’s a change some shoppers support. Ellie Spanswick, a social media marketer in Falmouth, England, buys produce, eggs and other groceries at farm stands and local shops when she can. The food has no labels, she said, but it’s easy to see that it’s fresh.

“The last thing we need to be doing is wasting more food and money because it has a label on it telling us it’s past being good for eating,” Spanswick said.

But not everyone agrees. Ana Wetrov of London, who runs a home renovation business with her husband, worries that without labels, staff might not know which items should be removed from shelves. She recently bought a pineapple and only realized after she cut into it that it was rotting in the middle.

“We have had dates on those packages for the last 20 years or so. Why fix it when it’s not broken?” Wetrov said.

Some U.S. chains — including Walmart — have shifted their store brands to standardized “best if used by” and “use by” labels. The Consumer Brands Association — which represents big food companies like General Mills and Dole — also encourages members to use those labels.

“Uniformity makes it much more simple for our companies to manufacture products and keep the prices lower,” said Katie Denis, the association’s vice president of communications.

In the absence of federal policy, states have stepped in with their own laws, frustrating food companies and grocers. Florida and Nevada, for example, require “sell by” dates on shellfish and dairy, and Arizona requires “best by” or “use by” dates on eggs, according to Emily Broad Lieb, director of the Food Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School.

The confusion has led some companies, like Unilever, to support legislation currently in Congress that would standardize U.S. date labels and ensure that food could be donated to rescue organizations even after its quality date. At least 20 states currently prohibit the sale or donation of food after the date listed on the label because of liability fears, Lieb said.

Clearer labeling and donation rules could help nonprofits like Food Shift, which trains chefs using rescued food. It even makes dog treats from overripe bananas, recovered chicken fat and spent grain from a brewer, Apple said.

“We definitely need to be focusing more on doing these small actions like addressing expiration date labels, because even though it’s such a tiny part of this whole food waste issue, it can be very impactful,” Apple said.

__

Associated Press writers Kelvin Chan and Courtney Bonnell in London and Associated Press video journalist Terry Chea in Alameda, California contributed to this report.

'It doesn't mean you will get cancer': Carcinogen-free food is not easy to come by, experts say. How worried should consumers be?

OCTOBER 04, 2022
ByRACHEL YEOOSCAR LIU

South China Morning Post

Laboratory tests commissioned by the Post have found several types of potentially cancer-causing chemicals in several popular snacks, and while experts say the risk to consumers is limited, they should pay close attention to their cooking methods, watch how much they eat of such products and consider diversifying their diets.

Ensuring food was completely free of carcinogens would prove difficult, some academics acknowledged, as the chemicals were often the result of high heat used during manufacturing or cooking. But consumers could take steps to minimise the risks, they said.

The checks, carried out by an established food testing laboratory, found 10 out of 18 samples of cooking oil, soy sauce, biscuits and crisps readily available on supermarket shelves contained types of cancer-causing substances.

But the tests all found lower levels of these harmful substances, namely glycidol, 3-MCPD (3-monochloropropane-1, 2-diol), acrylamide, arsenic and 4-methylimidazole, than what the Consumer Council recorded in its screenings carried out between 2016 and 2021.

Traces of glycidol, an organic compound, were detected in Quaker Oat Cookies with Raisins, Chips Ahoy Chocolate Chip Cookies Original and a sample of cooking oil, Yuwanjia Peanut Oil.

Most food safety guidelines, such as those from the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the Joint Food and Agriculture Organisation/World Health Organisation Expert Committee on Food Additives do not include recommended intake limits for glycidol.

While scientists have not determined what constitutes a dangerous amount of glycidol in food for humans, consuming any amount presented a risk, warned Chan Tsz-chung, a lecturer at the department of health and life sciences at the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education in Chai Wan.

Chan Tsz-chung, a lecturer at the department of health and life sciences at the Hong Kong Institute of Vocational Education in Chai Wan.
PHOTO: South China Morning Post

"It doesn't mean you will get cancer, but it just increases the risks for it," he said.

But Dr Fong Lai-ying, an associate professor at the department of food and health sciences at the Technological and Higher Education Institute of Hong Kong, advised residents not to be too concerned, noting the total amount of glycidol present in 1kg of food samples measured in just micrograms. The chemicals were easily digested and degraded by the body, she added.

The commissioned tests found 103 micrograms per kilogram of glycidol in the sample of Chips Ahoy Chocolate Chip Cookies, less than the 570 micrograms per kilogram recorded by the council in 2019.

But 42-year-old father Lam Siu-ki, was unconcerned when told of the numbers. The biscuit brand was a family favourite, an inexpensive, convenient snack that could also be offered to guests, he said.

Marks & Spencer All Butter Cookies with Pistachio Nuts and Almonds, Chips Ahoy Chocolate Chip Cookies and Quaker Oat Cookies were tested for carcinogens.
PHOTO: South China Morning Post

"These snacks are the best. They can be stored in my snack drawer for a long time," said the logistics worker, adding he was always on the lookout for deals when shopping for food for himself, his 37-year-old wife and their three-year-old daughter.

"My daughter and I can always munch on them when we are watching television or between meals," he said. "[The biscuits] are not expensive and taste pretty good. You can put them on a plate when guests visit. I love the fact that they are crunchy and not many brands have chocolate chips on top of the cookies."

Lam said he did not fret about consuming the carcinogens because he believed such chemicals were practically ubiquitous.

"You won't have choices if you are scared of the substance and ingredients in pre-packaged food. Chemical reactions are something you cannot control when it comes to food manufacturing," he said. "Even if that group [the council] can test every product on the market, people might still ignore its findings.''

Still, he conceded he would cut down on the number of the cookies his daughter ate.

A spokeswoman for the manufacturer, Mondelez Hong Kong, acknowledged the lab results but did not comment further.

A consumer says she will continue to use Yuwanjia Peanut Oil because its price suited her budget. 
PHOTO: South China Morning Post

The Post also tested Yuwanjia peanut oil and found it contained 417mcg/kg of glycidol and 380mcg/kg of 3-MCPD, an organic chemical compound and suspected carcinogen in humans that formed at high heat during the cooking process.

But again those levels marked an improvement over what the council found in 2017. It previously recorded 1,100mcg/kg of glycidol and 6,800mcg/kg of 3-MCPD.

Retiree Kam Mei-Lan, 71, who has two children and two grandchildren, said she had used Yuwanjia peanut oil and had no issues.

"I tend to use cooking oil generously when deep frying chips and nuggets for my grandchildren," she said. "The more oil I use for cooking, the better the smell of the food."

Read Also

Harmful contaminants found in almost all cooking oils tested in Hong Kong

Kam lives in Tseung Kwan O, where several brands of cooking oil are available in nearby supermarkets such as ParknShop, Wellcome and U-Select, but she put price above all else when choosing which one to buy.

"I don't care about brands of cooking oil," she said. "It all depends on what supermarkets are closest to me or which brand is the cheapest."

A recent check in late August at stores run by the three chains in the neighbourhood found a pack of three 900mL bottles of Yuwanjia peanut oil cost HK$97.90 (S$17.80), while the same volume of the Lion and Globe brand and Yu Pin King one cost HK$104.90 and HK$100, respectively.

"There is nothing to be worried about," Kam insisted. "We just need oil for cooking. Any brand or even those imported ones could have bad stuff too. Affordability is one of my most important considerations."

But in a small concession to health perhaps, Kam has in the past few months started to use an air fryer to crisp up food, a cooking method that requires far less oil.

The Post presented the lab results to the manufacturer of Yuwanjia Peanut Oil, China Resources Vanguard (Hong Kong), and when asked for a comment it said the product was legal to sell locally.

The levels of 3-MCPD detected in the oil were still considered safe by experts, but the Centre for Food Safety advised residents to reduce their exposure to the compound and glycidol by cutting consumption of refined fats and oils, as well as related products, such as margarine.

Similarly, the government department advised food companies to follow the relevant industry code of practices contained in the Codex Alimentarius to ensure levels of 3-MCPD and glycidol in edible fats and oils were reduced as much as possible.

The Codex is a collection of international standards and guidelines to protect consumer health and ensure fair practices in the food trade, with the suggestions widely adopted around the world.

Read Also

US coffee giant Starbucks faces more backlash in China over expired products

One way consumers can protect themselves is by keeping the heat low when cooking with oil, according to Fong at the Technological and Higher Education Institute. She recommended that when cooking food in oil, the heat be less than 150 degrees Celsius. A spokesman for the centre advised the public not to cook food at high temperatures for too long.

The Post also found small amounts of acrylamide, another organic compound, in four food product samples: Luke's Organic White Truffle & Sea Salt Potato Chips, Marks & Spencer All Butter Cookies with Pistachio Nuts and Almonds, Wise Cottage Fries Potato Chips Hot & Spicy Flavour and Nissin Koikeya Karamucho Hot Chilli Flavour Potato Chips.

The United States Department of Health considers acrylamide to be "reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen", but experts such as Fong and Chan said the levels found in the lab tests were still safe to consume. Acrylamide, which is also found in cigarette smoke, can be an unintentional by-product of cooking certain foods at high temperature.

Consumers can choose to boil or steam instead to reduce the formation of acrylamide, Fong said, adding they should closely follow the manufacturer's instructions on the package to avoid overcooking.

"All these carcinogens are not added purposely by the manufacturers, they will come naturally throughout the cooking process with high temperatures," she said. "It's very difficult to avoid or reduce them to zero.

"It is better to have guidelines than to have a law that stops the production of these types of carcinogens in those foods."

Chairman of the Hong Kong Food Council Thomas Ng.
PHOTO: South China Morning Post

Thomas Ng Wing-yan, chairman of the Hong Kong Food Council, shared a similar opinion, saying there was only "relative safety, but not absolute safety".

"Even if you are careful about what you eat, it doesn't mean if you buy one product over the other then you are considered safe. It's not possible because everything has substances, so does that mean you don't eat at all?" he said.

Experts noted that people's bodies absorb certain chemicals at different rates, and the level depends on physical fitness and other health factors, making it difficult to establish a universal standard that could be recommended for everyone.

Ng advised residents to eat in moderation and alter the variety of foods consumed ­– coffee one day and apple or orange juice the next, for example.

The Post tested the sodium levels of Brilliant Hot & Spicy Flavour Prawn Crackers, Select Original Prawn Crackers and Papatonk Original Indonesian Premium Shrimp Crackers.
PHOTO: South China Morning Post

The Post also examined the level of sodium in three crispy snacks. The product with the highest amount was Select Original Prawn Crackers with 1,400 milligrams per 100 grams of sodium, up slightly from the 1,320 milligrams per 100 grams detected by the council two years ago.

The other two crispy snacks, Brilliant Hot & Spicy Flavour Prawn Crackers and Papatonk Original Indonesian Premium Shrimp Crackers, had 1,260 milligrams per 100 grams and 1,090 milligrams per 100 grams, slightly higher than what the watchdog found in August 2020.

But Fong said the elevated sodium levels should not be a cause for concern among most adults, as they generally did not eat such snacks regularly. But parents should monitor how many salty snacks their children consumed, she warned, as they might have less self-control and binge.

She advised manufacturers to offer their snacks in smaller sizes, such as selling 20 gram portions instead of 100 gram packets, so consumers could more easily regulate their sodium intake.

According to the centre, adults should consume no more than 2,000 milligrams of sodium daily to reduce the risk of high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, stroke and coronary heart disease. Consumers are also advised to read the nutrition labels when buying pre-packaged food and choose ones with less sodium.

This article was first published in South China Morning Post.