In Beijing

WITH consumer confidence in Chinese diary products at an unprecedented low, senior leaders and officials here have been going all out to reassure the public that not every egg in the basket is rotten.

On Sunday, China's health minister Chen Zhu and newly-appointed quality control chief Wang Yong visited supermarkets and dairy factories in Beijing as part of a growing confidence building campaign.

Mr Chen was shown on state television interacting with shoppers at a supermarket, inspecting the shelves of diary products, and even drinking a glass of milk from Yili, one of the most popular brand in China, at least before the tainted milk scandal.

Likewise, Mr Wang was shown eating some yogurt when he visited an Yili-owned factory in Beijing.

It's hard to say if anyone's genuinely convinced, but the episode would at least point to the Chinese government having internalised some of the lessons from the Sars crisis, in this case, the need to swiftly restore public trust after a spectacular collapse.

Mr Chen was quoted saying by the official Xinhua news agency: "The best way to restore public trust in diary products is to produce quality and safe products, as well as increase supervision and corporate responsibility."

The affable health minister is only half right. Consumers will not be fully convinced until they have been told why the tainted milk scandal was covered up for so many months, and how such cover-ups can be prevented in future.

There are at least two ways to guard against such cover-ups: one, by giving consumers a reliable channel to report problems, and two, by giving the media the freedom to report these misdeeds.

But rights activists here suggest that the Chinese government has instead tightened its control over the media in recent weeks a bid to prevent public anger from boiling over.

This might work in the authorities favour in the short-run, but as last year's food scares and the latest tainted milk scandal show, such a move will only ensure that the problem returns to haunt them yet again.