Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chinese markets strike me as absolutely brutal. I mean, there is always some theft, fraud etc. in any market (one of the oldest written records of humanity is a customer complaint about bad copper sold by a certain Mesopotamian merchant called Ea-nasir in 1750 BC), but stuff like poisoning your customers with Sudan Red, or adding melamine to yoghurt, or frying food on gutter oil seems to always be reported from China…
Same goes with India as well. I have always wondered about this, may be it is the trade-off between getting caught and the sheer desperation to make money that tilts the moral compass to act in unethical ways.
A very western sentiment. We often deride the quest for profits, demonizing people who put profit ahead of something more noble like safety. But in places like China "profit" is life. China has seen starvation in living memory. In countries without social safety nets a failed business likely means utter destitution, very often leading to physical violence. The people who run restaurants, and certainly the people who work in them, are not chasing profits because they want to drive nice cars. They are chasing profits because they too want to keep eating.