China’s child vaccine scandal spells big trouble for president Xi

The word changsheng means ‘long life’. But Gao Junfang’s Changsheng Biotech has long been in the business of robbing its victims of just that. Since taking over the company in the nineties, Gao oversaw the privatisation of the state-owned big pharma and turned it into her personal dynasty. She secured majority shares and planted her husband, her children, and their partners into the meatiest roles in the company. For decades, Gao was the entrepreneurial poster child – from rags (sort of) to riches, a walking example of the possibilities of China’s economic growth, and an idol especially for women.

But last month, Gao was arrested along with 17 other people in the company. As of 2017, Changsheng had sold 250,000 dud DPT vaccines. In China, as in Britain, these jabs are used to immunise babies against diphtheria, whooping cough, and tetanus. Though the inferior three-in-one vaccines didn’t produce any adverse effects, their recipients were not actually immunised; all three diseases are potentially fatal.