Chinese media, advertising, and urban life.

In the wake of the melamine milk scandal, there's been renewed attention in China on the benefits of breast-feeding, and media observers have been examining the questionable ways in which dairy companies hawk their products.

An article in the Mirror connects those issues to growing concerns over personal privacy. At the end of August, as the NPC Standing Committee was discussing changes to the country's criminal law that would beef up privacy protections, the paper printed a report illustrating how hospitals sell off their patient's personal information.

A Mirror reporter interviewed a sales manager for a milk powder producer who described how his company spends several million yuan every year to obtain the personal information of expecting mothers, and millions more to curry favor with hospital administration and staff:

The reporter called up the maternity ward of a certain Beijing hospital and asked to buy personal information. The response was severe: "No. personal information here is highly confidential. We would never sell it."

Then the sales manager himself called up the head nurse in the maternity ward. The nurse recognized him and told him to come right over to the hospital to pick up the information.

It's not an entirely convincing article, however. It's completely reliant on information provided by one anonymous source, and some of that information seems contradictory: at one point, the sales manager suggests that there are only a few people in a typical large hospital who can access files on new mothers, but later on he gives the large number of people aware of that information as a reason why any investigator would have a difficult time pinning a leak on any one individual.

But if it's true, it adds another angle on the pressure that new mothers must be facing from the dairy industry to formula-feed their babies.

For the past few days, the fourth session of the 11th NPC Standing Committee met to discuss revising the criminal law to increase protections of citizen's personal information. yesterday [2008.08.26], a sales manager for a dairy company revealed to this reporter how hospitals make money by selling pregnant women's personal information.

"Do you know what people are most interested in new mothers' information?" The interview had just started when the thirty-something sales manager put this question to the reporter. Then, the manager proceeded to answer it in detail.