Who said investigative journalism is dead in China? Two recent media reports have created a furore which even the censors cannot control. They cover a most basic concern, food, and have left citizens wondering whom they can trust anymore.

Last month, The Beijing News revealed that it was a common practice in China
to use the same tankers that carried fuel oil (extracted from coal) to also carry edible oil — without the storage tank being cleaned between the two operations. The reporter followed two such tankers. The first started off from the country’s largest chemical complex, deposited its cargo at a small factory, then picked up its second order of soybean oil from a grain company. The tanker was not cleaned before the soybean oil was filled. The second tanker was traced as it plied to the country’s largest government grain company, where it was loaded with soybean oil. The driver said he had just finished delivering fuel oil and had not cleaned the storage tank before loading his second consignment.

Conversations with drivers revealed that the transportation of different categories of oil in the same vehicle was a recent phenomenon. Tanker owners did not want their vehicles to return empty after delivering a consignment, and cleaning the tank as per scientific procedure costs between 300 and 900 yuan. On their part, edible oil companies were not too particular about the tank being cleaned. To please them, drivers often replaced the words, 'ordinary liquid', on the tanker along with the words, 'edible oil', either with paint or a sticker. The sales manager of a government-owned edible oil company told the reporter that the buyers arranged for transport, hence it was their responsibility to ensure that special trucks were used.

What facilitated this state of affairs was that official transport specifications recommended, but did not make it mandatory, for separate trucks to be used for edible oil. The report sent readers into a tizzy.

Barely had they processed the fact that the oil they used for cooking was probably contaminated with fuel oil, when a follow-up investigation by the reputed business media group, Caixin, revealed that container ships carrying edible oil also often carried chemicals and diesel fuel without any cleaning of the storage tank. Safety certificates for the ships could be easily bought, the report claimed.

With even official media outlets publishing strong comments on these revelations — CCTV called it no less than “poisoning” — the authorities have started inquiries and the government firm named in the report has promised to blacklist buyers guilty of such negligence. These steps have not assuaged people’s anger. One netizen asked: why weren’t the authorities as strict on food safety as they were on films? (The government recently made it mandatory for short-film makers to get clearance before exhibiting their films abroad after Chinese short films critical of the system won awards at prestigious film festivals.) Wondering why “such vicious food hygiene cases were so common”, one commentator ascribed it to “the lack of respect for people”. He was referring to the 2008 scandal where baby milk powder was found to have been laced with melamine to increase its protein content and the 2013 gutter oil scandal involving the practice of reprocessing discarded cooking oil.

Like the current scandal, those too had been unearthed by the media. The Beijing News reporter (the paper is owned by the Communist Party of China) is being hailed as a hero on the internet. Apparently, he had earlier done several exposés of high-profile firms. “5 journalists are worth 100 market supervision bureaus!” wrote one commentator, only to have another point out that investigative journalists were becoming rarer than giant pandas in China.