Coronavirus prompts top-level call for China’s markets to modernise

Name: New coronavirus outbreak at Beijing food market fuels fears of second wave of cases in China
Uploaded: 2020-06-17T11:21:27.000Z
Duration: 1 min 39 s
Description: New coronavirus outbreak at Beijing food market fuels fears of second wave of cases in China

Chinese Communist Party’s powerful disciplinary watchdog says Beijing market outbreak exposes supply chain weaknesses

Article asks what needs to be done to make wholesale markets fit for modern metropolis

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A seafood stall is inspected at a Beijing wholesale food market. Photo: Xinhua

Phoebe Zhang

Published: 7:21pm, 17 Jun 2020Updated: 11:44pm, 17 Jun 2020

China’s disciplinary watchdog has called for an overhaul of wholesale food markets to bring them up to modern standards after a coronavirus outbreak led to a return of restrictions in the capital Beijing on Wednesday.

An article published on the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) said the latest cluster – all linked to Beijing’s sprawling Xinfadi market – had raised the question: “how do we run a clean, sanitary, modernised wholesale market that is in line with a metropolis?”

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New coronavirus outbreak at Beijing food market fuels fears of second wave of cases in China

Beijing authorities raised their emergency response to the second highest level in a late-night conference on Tuesday, putting the city into partial lockdown as infections related to the market reached 137. The initial coronavirus cases in the central Chinese city of Wuhan were also associated with a market, which has since been shut down and thoroughly sanitised.

The CCDI is the Communist Party’s highest internal control institution, best known for its anti-corruption investigations. Its article was damning of China’s markets, commenting that “the dirty and chaotic appearance in such markets shows the immaturity of the urban circulation system for agricultural products”.

“In people's impressions … [the markets] brought locals convenience, but they have also generated a series of environmental and hygiene issues such as sewage, noise, mosquitoes and vermin, and traffic jams.”

The Beijing outbreak had also exposed deficiencies in supply chain monitoring, the article said. One possibility is that the Xinfadi market cluster originated from contaminated seafood or meat transported along a frozen food supply chain.