China’s Vaccine Scandal: The Worst Social Crisis in a Decade

In mid-July, two of China’s major pharmaceutical companies were found to have sold hundreds of thousands of faulty vaccines for children. The Chinese media later discovered that the two companies, which dominate a large part of the Chinese market, have been guilty of various forms of misconduct in recent years. Local regulators appeared not to have taken these issues seriously.

The resulting debacle deeply shocked society, as all Chinese families – whether the super rich, middle class, or low income – realized that they can be or have already been the victims.

To assuage national anger, China’s top authorities promised relentless punishment for those responsible for the scandal. However, people’s faith in Chinese vaccines – and the Chinese government – cannot be so easily repaired.

A Delayed Scandal

In mid-July, the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) announced that during a snap inspection, Changchun Changsheng Bio-technology Ltd. in Jilin Province – the country’s second-largest maker of rabies vaccines – was found to have falsified reports regarding the production and inspection of some 113,000 rabies vaccines. CFDA stated that the company’s Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) for medical products certificate (a licence for production) has been revoked.

The problematic batch had not been put on the market yet, and local inspectors were stationed at the company for further investigation, CFDA added in its announcement.

In its own statement, Changsheng Life Sciences, Changchun Changsheng’s parent company, claimed that the company had voluntarily recalled and sealed all its rabies vaccines in the market, adding that “no adverse effects related to the quality of the vaccine have been found.”

While the company thought the crisis had been controlled, the Chinese media was already at work digging up more disturbing instances of wrongdoing by Changsheng. Early In 2017, the local drug watchdog had found that a total of 253,338 doses of Changsheng’s DPT vaccine (a combination vaccine meant to prevent diphtheria, pertussis, and tetanus) were ineffective.

To make matters worse, 252,600 DPT vaccines in the batch had been sold to disease control and prevention centers in Shandong province. According to China’s state media, 215,184 children were injected with the suspect vaccine.

Together with Changsheng, another state-owned company, the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products, was also found to have produced at least 400,000 doses of faulty DPT vaccines in late 2017. These faulty vaccines were reportedly sold to Hebei province and Chongqing city.

China’s mandatory national vaccination program demands that all Chinese children, between 3 months old to 6 years old, have the DPT vaccine along with other vaccines. These mandatory vaccines are given to Chinese children free of charge, but children who do not get them will be forbidden from entering school. Thus, typically, no matter whether a child is from a super rich family, a middle-class family, or a low-income one, they will receive the same brand of vaccine provided by the local drug authority.

Unsurprisingly, the delayed reports of substandard DPT vaccines, alongside reports of the rabies vaccine problem, made every Chinese family panic.

As soon as the scandal broke, numerous parents took to their social media accounts to reveal that their children had already received vaccines made by the two problematic companies. However, they had never been informed by their local governments about the problems with the vaccines or the steps taken to remedy the problem.

What infuriated Chinese parents most was that the Jilin drug authority had originally intentionally played down the DPT vaccine scandal, punishing Chengsheng with only a fine of 3.4 million Chinese yuan (roughly $500,000). In comparison, the company invoiced 566 million yuan and received 48.3 million yuan in government subsidies in 2017.

Liu Qiangdong, the founder of Jingdong Mall, one of China’s leading e-commerce companies, has a 3-year-old child. He commented angrily on his Weibo account that the owner of the vaccine company should “spend his rest of life in prison without parole.”

A Merciless Punishment

Several days after Chinese parents fiercely condemned the companies and the local drug authorities online, China’s top authority finally made its stance clear.

On July 22, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said this incident crossed a “moral bottom line” and ordered an investigation into the “complete production and sale processes” of vaccines.

“No matter which companies or individuals are involved, they will be punished resolutely without mercy,” Li added.

Notably, the scandal broke out at a sensitive moment. Due to the trade war with the United States, China’s top authorities, particularly Chinese President Xi Jinping, have been facing criticism at home and abroad for their questionable domestic and foreign policies. When national anger over the vaccine scandal reached its boiling point, Xi himself was visiting Africa. Xi was thus criticized for throwing away national money in donations to foreign countries without taking care of his own people.

One day after Li’s remarks were published, Xi, taking time out from his trip to Africa, also gave instructions on the scandal. According to China’s national TV station, Xi called the incident “appalling,” and ordered the authorities to use severe punishments “to cure the chronic disease [of corruption] and scrape poison from one’s bones.”

Xi further vowed to “clean up the scandal-ridden industry” and to “safeguard the bottom line of social safety” so as to “ensure social stability.”

The instructions from China’s top leaders immediately took effect.

On July 23, Changchun Changsheng’s chairwoman Gao Junfang, along with four other executives, were taken away by local police for questioning. The next day local police arrested Gao along with other 14 people on “suspicion of criminal offenses.” Then the State Council sent an independent investigation team to Jilin province for the case. On July 27, Xinhua announced that the investigation into Changsheng had come to an end. The investigation team found that the company had systematically falsified production and testing records to avoid regulatory scrutiny. “The company used expired materials to produce some rabies vaccine and falsified the production date,” the investigation team revealed. Meanwhile, a national inspection on vaccine makers around the country was launched.

In mid-August, the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party (China’s highest decision-making body) held a special meeting on the vaccine case. The meeting, presided over by Xi himself, sacked two senior officials of Jilin Province and two top officials of the CFDA. The former deputy head of the CFDA was sent to the Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and National Supervisory Commission for further investigation. A total of 35 local officials were held accountable.

On August 17, the State Council decided to confiscate all illegal income and levy the highest possible fine on Changsheng. Meanwhile, Xinhua announced that six government officials of Hubei Province were removed from their posts in relation to the case of the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products.

A Broken Faith

To be fair, the Chinese top authorities’ crackdown on the companies and officials involved in the scandal was relentless. Yet the government’s remedies to date are far from completely satisfactory.

Although the government launched a state-level investigation and released the investigation results, the Chinese media was forbidden from conducting independent investigations or publishing independent reports. A senior Chinese media worker who prefers to remain anonymous told The Diplomat that their media outlet had been asked by China’s censorship department to stay away from the story when the scandal first erupted. The media outlet, together with many others, ventured to report about the scandal regardless. But as the Chinese media gradually touched upon more hidden and profound problems underlying the scandal – such as the issue of monopolies in the Chinese vaccine market, the corruption of local governments, and the complicated backgrounds of the vaccine companies’ owners – China’s censorship department forbade the reports from being published.

The vaccine scandal’s damage to the Chinese government’s credibility is even worse than that of the notorious Chinese milk powder scandal in 2008. The current popularity and wide usage of social media and instant message apps has allowed the Chinese public to witness the government’s control over information and the media with their own eyes. A popular online article related to the scandal could be deleted by censors within a minute.

The fierce information controls have only left the public full of distrust in the government’s investigation results. Chinese people’s faith in China-made vaccines is broken, perhaps beyond repair. Many parents with better financial support are now vowing to send their children to Hong Kong, Macau, or even foreign countries to receive vaccines.