Tarnished American Philanthropy in China
By LARRY ROMANOFF – September 24, 2020
According to Chinese state authorities, Ron Brown of the AGAPE Foundation of Peachtree City, Georgia, traveled to
Wuhan in late 2004 and signed a contract
with several domestic charitable organisations in China to provide 2 million
RMB each year of medical supplies and materials, in part to assist with
cardiac surgery and treatments, but the overall purpose was stated as being
"to improve the lives of orphans and the lonely elderly". So far, so
good.
Some time after the signing of this
agreement, AGAPE shipped its first 'donation' of medical devices to Shaoyang
City in Hunan. I happened to be in Shanghai at the time and was watching a TV
news program which included a segment on this first AGAPE donation of medical
supplies, the container being opened in the presence of local medical officials
and a TV news crew. The shipment included heart surgery kits, medical outfits,
medical gloves, pledgets, adhesive tapes, waste bins, catheters, sutures,
syringes, and other accessories. We watched while the Customs Officers and
medical staff examined the contents of these containers. What we saw was
appalling.
The donated “medical supplies” had been
re-packed in old boxes bearing labels for foodstuffs, electronics, and even
Coca Cola and KFC, many of which were soiled by mildew, oil, and dirt stains
and emitted strong odors. All of the medicines, drugs, pharmaceuticals, were
past (or long past) their safe-use dates. Carton after carton of syringes,
bandages, sterile wrappings and similar items were all in packages that had
been opened and were no longer sterile. It was easy, even on TV, to see that
many of the syringes had been used, then replaced in their packages, and one
could see the cockroaches crawling around inside the supposedly-sterile
cartons. Catheters that were supposedly to be used for heart surgery, were
clearly used, were in non-sterile packaging, and suitable only for discard. The
disposable syringes contained a suspicious black fluid and had lost their sterility
through exposure to the air, while reagents and disinfectants had leaked,
contaminating other items.
The shipment contained hundreds of cartons of
expired and damaged medical supplies, all clearly used and discarded, many
boxes of second-hand medical equipment that also appeared used and damaged.
There were as well perhaps 100 cartons of childrens' medical supplies, all of
which had clearly been used and most likely discarded as well. The many
wheelchairs in the container were simply thrown into a heap, all clearly broken
and unusable, many with broken wheels or no wheels at all. It was all rubbish.
Nevertheless, a bit later, yet another
shipment arrived from the Foundation, (with a stated value of several hundred
thousand dollars), this time entering Tianjin customs, with the same results.
The shipment consisted of almost 1,000 cartons of expired and used disposable
medical devices, non-sterile supplies where all the packaging was damaged and
contents exposed to contamination, moldy
and stained clothing and filthy, used surgical clothing. Customs inspectors
found medical pipes that expired in 1998, dirty, mildewed sheets and used surgical gowns stained with blood. Many
staff on the scene reported examining children's and other clothing that was
dirty, covered with blood, and otherwise damaged and soiled. It was apparent
from watching on TV and was also the consensus of the medical authorities that this clothing was from people who died in
accidents and hospitals, with evidence that much of the clothing had been
rescued from dumpsters. The entire shipment was garbage. The government
closed and locked the containers and returned them to the US. These
"charitable donations" were such a shock the UK Guardian covered them
in an article, stating, "Thousands of pounds of medical equipment donated
to China will be returned to the US because it includes stained bedding, used
surgical clothes and expired medical equipment." The Chinese news media
were understated, reporting simply that "three containers of donations
sent to charitable organisations in Beijing and the northern provinces of Anhui
and Hebei were found to be of "questionable quality" and would be
sent back to the US."
Not to be daunted, another shipment from
AGAPE soon appeared in Anhui province, another nearly 1,000 cartons of used and
expired medical material with a stated value of $115,000. A short while later,
the City Health Bureau of Inner Mongolia received a large shipment of used,
damaged and expired supplies, dirty old clothing "and other foreign
garbage". The cartons even contained old quilts covered in what appeared to be blood stains, used and stained gauze rolls and bandages,
and filthy boxes that could have contained nothing but infectious bacteria. The
shipment was also returned to the US. The Chinese media said, "The real
situation of these donations was amazing." By this time, the shipments
contained such serious quality problems that China's state council issued a
warning notice on all shipments of medical supplies from the Foundation. After
receipts of the shipments noted below, China's
State Inspection and Quarantine issued a total ban on anything originating from
the AGAPE and LDS Foundations, and informed the US Embassy of this fact.
In Wuhan, the Hubei province Inspection and
Quarantine Bureau was on the scene with various local medical and charitable
personnel, as well as representatives from AGAPE, to welcome a donation of
medical supplies which were to consist of cardiac surgery kits, syringes,
reagents, wheelchairs, etc. The Foundation stated its donations to Hubei
hospital were "to supply its open heart surgery mission" in the
region. The beautifully understated Inspection report said, "Field test
results were unexpected". Unexpected, indeed. The entire contents of both
shipments, 'valued' at several hundred thousand dollars, consisted of used and
discarded wheelchairs missing wheels and other major parts, and cartons of
expired medications. Another shipment of
'medical equipment' contained around 600 cartons in which the medications had
all expired by the delivery date, some having expired almost 15 years prior.
The balance of the shipment consisted of syringes
in damaged packaging that was no longer sterile, others with an unknown dirty
liquid, spider webs, mildewed and contaminated supplies, and used medical
waste. The Inspection staff quarantined the shipment on the spot and
ordered it immediately incinerated.
A short while later, the American LDS
Foundation headquartered in Utah, a charitable arm of the Mormon Church, shipped
another container to Wuhan, this one weighing ten tons and 'valued' at $360,000
(but valued for their tax deductions at $4 million), that authorities described as "the largest shipment of foreign medical
waste in history". And this was truly medical waste - used and
discarded syringes, blood-stained bandages, damaged instruments, and worse. The
shipment contained hundreds of cartons of expired
medical supplies, used and damaged second-hand medical equipment, old and
damaged rehabilitation equipment, used and non-sterile heart surgery kits, used
and stained medical outfits, used medical gloves, pledgets, adhesive tapes, old
medical waste bins, non-sterile catheters and sutures, and other
accessories. Once again, all medications
had expired prior to arrival in China, some having reached their expiration
dates 15 years prior. The shipment contained not only expired and used
supplies, but also used and discarded
bedding and clothing that were filthy, much of it blood-stained, the remainder
mildewed, torn and faded. Liquids had leaked everywhere, and all supplies
were packed in dirty, used boxes which were stained with mildew, oil and other
contaminants, making the containers appear to be garbage bins - which they
were. Experts at Wuhan Medical
University who examined the shipment contents, asserted they were simply a
dumping of medical waste. The two loads were incinerated almost immediately
after opening. The LDS Foundation claimed to have no knowledge of these events,
but declined opportunities for media interviews. Following these American
misadventures, the Chinese charities took legal action to sever their contracts
with AGAPE, and China's national
government instituted a total ban on all non-factory shipments of medical
equipment and supplies from the US and the West, with heavy fines for any
violation.
After some investigation, medical authorities
concluded that AGAPE had scoured the US
for medical waste from sources scattered throughout the country, those sources
then shipping their medical waste directly to China while AGAPE took the tax
deductions for the claimed values. India reported similar issues of not
only medical waste but electronic waste that was economically useless, could
not be recycled, and was dangerous or expensive to destroy. India estimated at
the time more than half of the small-scale waste products in the country had
originated in the US and Europe, disposed of by shipping to India as
'charitable donations', a major portion of this product being potentially
lethal medical waste. It was not only
cheaper to ship these categories of garbage to China or India than to deal with
them locally, but the Western charities profited hugely from these schemes
since they could charge disposal fees to local US firms. In the case of
electronic components, these charities could charge an American firm $20 to
dispose of a PC or equivalent amount of computer trash, then ship it to a poor
country for less than $2, and pocket the difference. A similar case was true
for medical waste. In fact, such imports
had been banned in China and other nations years earlier, but the huge profits
made these collections and shipments too enticing for American charities to
resist, resulting in a huge illegal market for the dumping of medical and
other hazardous wastes.
A reporter informed us that AGAPE entered a
figure of only $30,000 for the value of its first China "donation",
but claimed an air transport cost of $400,000 - even though the shipments were
made by ocean container! AGAPE explained that the apparently low value of the
goods in these shipments was due to their being priced "at cost", and
passing into China duty-free. Otherwise, they claimed, the "real"
cost would have been many times higher. Then, in a surprising accounting
maneuver which I don't even pretend to understand, Brown claimed that $800,000
of total surgery costs in "Asia" would entail a much lesser expense
for materials - perhaps only 10%, with the balance being transportation etc.
Then, working backwards, he created an assumed cost for transportation (for the
supposed $30,000 value of medical waste) of US$400,000, claiming this amount as
a tax credit in keeping with his Foundation's tax exempt status as a US
charitable organisation. This scam was almost certainly done with the active
participation, and quite possibly the encouragement, of the US State
Department, since many of these
so-called charities are primarily political NGOs fronting as something more
innocent, many of them, like Bob Fu's China Aid, having direct and open links
to the White House.
These offensive practices imposed a
significant financial burden on the other nations, since most of this hazardous
waste was both dangerous and expensive to de-contaminate and destroy locally. The local Chinese charities suffered
financially to the extent of millions of dollars by having to absorb port fees
on shipments plus all logistics costs, tax and customs clearances, inspections
and medications tests, and many other procedures, as well as the heavy costs of
either returning the containers to the US or the local destruction of the
contents. Even more, the Chinese charities paid the travel expenses of
AGAPE and other US charity executives to China, including their airfares and
hotel accommodation plus living expenses while in the country, all in
anticipation of genuine medical donations. Of course, the Americans know nothing of this, since the US media censor all such
stories and neither Google nor Bing seem to yet have discovered it. By
contrast, Baidu serves up about 150,000 pages on this topic of AGAPE, the
LDS and other American Charities and Foundations. When confronted with this
mountain of appalling evidence, Ron Brown, director of the Agape Foundation,
stated that "one of the containers had been delayed in shipment",
causing "some supplies to expire". Brown asserted that local Chinese
authorities had destroyed usable supplies along with expired ones, noting that
the reasons behind this were "dubious". When asked why the Chinese would refuse (and incinerate) donations of
good medical supplies worth millions of dollars, Brown's response was to say,
"The key is that we reduced paying bribes to them." Charming.
*
Larry Romanoff is
a retired management consultant and businessman. He has held senior executive
positions in international consulting firms, and owned an international
import-export business. He has been a visiting professor at Shanghai's Fudan University,
presenting case studies in international affairs to senior EMBA classes. Mr.
Romanoff lives in Shanghai and is currently writing a series of ten books
generally related to China and the West. He can be contacted at: 2186604556@qq.com.
Larry Romanoff is
one of the contributing authors to Cynthia McKinney's new COVID-19
anthology ''When China Sneezes''.
Copyright © Larry
Romanoff, Moon of Shanghai, 2020
