Nooooooo! Not the Cheese!

Okay, maybe this isn't such a good place to live after all. Apparently the Chinese authorities have recently declared war on imported cheese. Who knows why? Do even the people enforcing it know why? James Fallows speculates that it might have something to do with the big milk contamination scandal from last fall. It would be a real stretch to connect the dots between those two, but it makes as much sense as any other explanation. It also reminds me of the big DVD crackdown last fall, which I wrote about here. For myself, I don't know anything I haven't read, although I did notice that the usual selection of imported cheeses was available last night at the grocery store (not that I bought any, the good stuff is far too expensive to be anything more than a very rare treat).

The more I learn about Chinese bureaucracy, the more it reminds me of that old legend about J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the F.B.I. Supposedly, he once wrote "watch the borders" in the margin of a memo. Rather than question him and face his wrath, his underlings ordered increased surveillance on the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada. Only later did they learn he was referring to the width of the margins on the memo itself.

So, did someone high up in Chinese customs and immigration enforcement say something to the effect of "don't cut the cheese", and everyone got confused? The world will never know, but by this time next month, it will probably all be forgotten.