New Life Post, March 23, 2010

The cover of today's New Life Post features a photo of a tumultuous press conference held in Shanxi yesterday during which the provincial government admitted that there were improprieties in a contract awarded to the Beijing Huawei Company to supply and distribute vaccines.

Yang Bo, the government spokesperson, declared the press conference over after reading a prepared statement, and was subsequently surrounded by the reporters in attendance. Despite their insistent questioning, he refused to provide much more information (see ESWN's translation of an account of the press conference and its aftermath).

The press was not entirely adversarial. Some papers, such as the Chutian Metropolis Daily, presented a picture of the press conference that was much more orderly.

According to an exposé that ran in the China Economic Times last week, the company exposed large quantities of the vaccines to heat, leading to the death of four children and adverse reactions in dozens of others. Although it admits that former CDC director Li Wenyuan is under investigation for accepting bribes, the provincial government continues to maintain that the vaccines themselves were problem-free.