As many as 17 bureaucracies have overlapping responsibilities in just the food and drug sphere, and they jealously guard their power. The Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture, the State Administration of Industry and Commerce, and the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine have all vied for monitoring roles.

The reason: They wanted to collect license fees and fines to supplement their measly budgets. No less significantly, inspectors and their bosses could collect bribes in exchange for favors.

Realizing they had created a muddle of competing bureaucracies, top leaders in 2003 formed the State Food and Drug Administration, named after its American counterpart, that on paper had "super-ministerial authority" to coordinate all the others that monitored the politically sensitive food and drug sphere.

The state-run media has been given unusual latitude to expose shoddy goods.