In their 1977 song "Neat Neat Neat," British punk rock band The Damned wrote, "no crime if there ain't no law." The song is largely nonsensical, but that lyric gives insight into human nature: If you don't make and enforce rules, people disinclined to follow them in the first place will respond in turn.
I lived in mainland China for three years, living in three cities and traveling to almost 30. When you immerse yourself in a new environment for that long, you won't know everything about it, but you'll understand a lot about the environment from which you came.
One thing I came to understand was how much Americans take product safety for granted. Our regulatory system is far from perfect - as illustrated by the recent California beef recall prompted not by government inspections but by a Humane Society investigation - but it works overall.
By contrast, the Chinese rarely eat raw vegetables and almost always peel fruit because of the risk of diarrhea.
Last summer, China executed Zheng Xiaoyu, former head of the State Food and Drug Administration, for accepting bribes from drug companies to approve unsafe and substandard drugs.
Most Chinese tea suppliers dry their tea leaves in ovens or the sun. According to the Washington Post, however, one supplier found a quicker way: Position a truck over the leaves and dry them with the lead-heavy exhaust.
One summer day in 2002, in the southern city of Guilin, I went to have my habitual fried noodles and pork for lunch. Thanks to that meal, I can now tell anyone who wants to know about the wonders of dysentery.
Now, China's problems have come here. You've probably heard about huge recalls of toxic and tainted food and toys.
I'm not calling for protectionism or indicting China, nor am I suggesting that nothing there is sanitary. I still love the country and would gladly live there again. But despite the ancient civilization that precedes it, modern China is an infant with a lot of lessons to learn.
China has copyright and product-safety laws, as we do, but corrupt local officials often don't enforce them. In China, you can't sell tainted food, but many market sellers, supermarkets and restaurants still do. You can't sell counterfeit Coke or Pepsi made from God-knows-what, but I've seen it in convenience stores. You can't sell pirated CDs or DVDs, but they outnumber the real thing.
With all the pressure from other countries, I trust China will clean up its act. After Zheng's execution, the S.F.D.A. tightened regulations. But some Americans want to go back in time.
Since the Reagan Administration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has faced several staff and funding cuts, and the Bush Administration has staffed product-safety agencies with people friendly to industry, according to The New York Times. Presidential candidate John McCain has called for fewer regulations on business to stimulate economic growth; considering what that has meant under Bush, one can only guess what you'll find in your creamed corn if McCain wins.
While many businessmen are honest, many are not. Self policing by businesses didn't ensure product safety in 1906, and it won't today or tomorrow. If an unscrupulous businessman can save a few bucks by using lead paint on toys, he just might.
Whatever Democratic or Republican candidates say, we don't need more or fewer regulations. We need effective, equitable and efficient regulations that don't hinder economic growth but don't hinder Americans' health and safety either. After all, there's "no crime if there ain't no law."
Write to Alaric at ajdearment@bsu.edu
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