Monitor | Nothing uniquely Chinese about Glaxo bribery case
The pharmaceutical industry routinely bribes doctors in the West to get its drugs prescribed, although the practice is given a thin façade
The media have been in a frenzy for the last few weeks over the detention of four GlaxoSmithKline employees in China.
Allegedly the four had channelled billions of yuan through a travel agency in order to bribe doctors to prescribe the British pharmaceutical company's drugs.
Reports have variously described the case as an attack on foreign companies by protectionist local authorities, a politically driven plot to marginalise the princeling children of late Communist Party general secretary Hu Yaobang, or a populist move by China's new leadership to bring down drug prices.
It may well be all three. China's leaders have always been adept at killing multiple birds with a single stone.
But one thing the Glaxo case is certainly not, despite what the reports make out, is uniquely Chinese.