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A picture circulated on Weibo of a carton of milk and piece of bread that make up a free school lunch for students at the Suode primary school in Fenghuang, central Hunan province in China.
BEIJING -- Five local Chinese education officials were sacked this week amid rampant speculation that they were stealing from a national lunch program, prompting a nationwide online debate over how this nation of 1.3 billion is feeding its more than 194 million K-12 students.
The five officials were dismissed from the Fenghuang school district in the central Hunan province after it was revealed they were serving substandard meals to the children, sparking outrage and raising questions about whether they were pocketing the money instead.
The terrible meals at Suode Primary were first exposed last month when a volunteer teacher at the school, Liang Xuyue, took a photo of the "healthy" lunch and posted it on China's Twitter-like service, Weibo.
The meal, a 20-gram piece of bread and a 200-ml carton of milk, was a far cry from the ministry of education's recommendation that free school meals for poor students should consist of meat, eggs and milk.
Liang noted that the school had also been supplied with seven cases of expired milk.
Influence of social media
The scope of China's national lunch program is daunting. The government allocated 16 billion yuan ($2.5 billion) in 2012 to be used to provide free lunches for approximately 26 million poor rural students. That means just 3 yuan (48 cents) is available per student.
By contrast, the National School Lunch program run by the USDA in the United States budgeted $11.1 billion in 2011 and served 31.8 million students. Taking into account students who pay within the plan for subsidized meals, the American program was able to budget $2.86 for free meals per student.
More than 880,000 comments were posted on Weibo about the scandal, many suspecting like Liang that school officials were lining their pockets with lunch money.
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"I've said it before, when it comes to money it is impossible for us to believe these officials without supervision!" wrote one Weibo user. "We should send these Ministry of Education officials to the forests to experience starvation!" declared another. "Let them suffer!"
Some Weibo users pointedly posted pictures of American school lunches side-by-side with the Suode lunch for comparison.
Hunan province education officials were forced to respond quickly to the outrage, reflecting social media's growing power in influencing how justice is served in China. The school's headmaster, two deputy headmasters and two Fenghuang County education officials were all summarily removed from their jobs.
'Kids need hot meals'
But the scandal has evolved beyond a simple case of naked graft and the mistreatment of these children. Many in China are now asking serious questions about the lunch program – not just about the pitiful amount spent per child, but the very makeup of a school lunch.
"In China the quality of life differs in various areas, so there is no unified national standard for what lunch should be like," Deng Fei, a former journalist for China's Phoenix Weekly news magazine, told NBC News.
Read more stories from China on NBC's Behind The Wall
Deng started a free lunch program after a reporting trip last year to rural schools in the relatively poor province of Guizhou. The concept was simple: private donations would be used to construct kitchens in poor schools so that children could have what is often their only hot meal of the day.
In mid-2011 as part of an Education Nation series, NBC News visited Baiyun Middle School, a rural school in Hunan that had recently opened one of Deng's kitchens. The students were poor – sons and daughters of migrant workers who make on average less than $40 a week.
As the noon time bell rang, 212 students dashed out from classrooms, steel bowls and chopsticks clanking as they lined up to receive a simple meal cooked by staff in the newly built kitchen: a generous square of rice, some stir-fried vegetables and tofu.
The meal was hearty, tasty and perhaps most importantly, cheap.
For Deng the meal summed up what he and many netizens believe is the biggest problem with the government's school meal plan: an over-emphasis on staples like milk and bread instead of Chinese options that are cheaper, nutritious and more filling.
"I understand the difficulty of some rural places, but after almost one year we should have made some progress," Deng said. "Enough of the milk and bread; these kids need hot meals."
Several teachers and program directors at Baiyun confirmed what a recent Stanford University study in China had discovered and published last year: a healthy, balanced lunch led to improved academic gains and more animated students.
Millions of parents no doubt agree – as does a ruling Communist Party that has emphasized education as a way to elevate socio-economic conditions for its people and maintain social stability.
NBC News' Yanzhou Liu contributed to this report.
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Corruption is endemic among Chinese officials. Should this be any kind of a surprise? It's even more expected by the Chinese than it is amongst our own politicians by us.
I spend 1/3 of the year in China for business. My apartment is right smack dab in the middle of a small town. I can eat very well for 50 cents per meal. It doesn't mean that I always do but one of my favorite restaurants is really that cheap. Wonderful people too!
You can't compare the cost of food. It's WAY cheaper in China.
Get a job in a government in ANY country and you will become Wealthy overnight. Look at our own government here in the U.S. Go in with empty pockets and come out with your pockets overflowing. So China is no exception, except that the Chinese really love money, and I mean REALLY. The U.S. if we are smart enough could probably buy every secret that China has.
I know numerous people that quit jobs with private companies to take government jobs. In the small town I grew up in, getting a government job is like hitting the lottery!!! One friend got his government job and was absolutely disgusted with the work ethic. A few years later, he was one of them. He was ashamed to admit it, but he became one of them.
This is a county as is North Korea that has no respect for life. They are a dinosaur and probably the situation is far worse than we will ever know. This situation is common place in China and they only make a show for western journalists to get them to believe what they want us to see and believe. On the whole they are monumentally backwards.
Apparently, corrupt officials in Hunan aren't the only people who steal from school lunches:
- school and prison lunch conglomerate Sodexo is being investigated for committing school lunch fraud with substandard ingredients and reduced portions in Colorado Springs since May
- the president of the school board in Elizabeth NJ was arrested earlier this year for stealing form the school lunch till
- then there's the legal form of stealing, with GOP US Rep. Rod Bishop trying to end the school lunch program, arguing that it's
unconstitutional" .. after defending some UT schools that got busted for reducing their lunch offerings and even substituted soda as a cheap, filling alternative
etc etc etc
If there's something to steal, somebody will find a way to steal it....
China bashing is the "in" thing right now.
Not really my point.. I just meant to say that stealing from the mouths of poor children seems to be all the rage, whether in China or the US.
Stealing from anyone seems to be the rage.... take from the "rich" and give to the morons sitting around. Take from the "poor" through corruption..... but where is the outrage for the "celebs" making milllions and bashing the very country they live in? I think $40 to see a football game is crazy. $350K per episode for a fat kid to be third fiddle? $5million contracts to whack a baseball? It's all theft and the average folks are getting the shaft while our President keeps holding up failed models as the way to succeed.
"... take from the "rich" and give to the morons sitting around..." - Sorry you see helping hungry school children in that light, Paul.
why are we still doing business with this third world stink hole? they sell us products that kill our pets, poison our children, items that are no more than junk, and our government still allows imports? wake up and stop taking bribes before the whole country is poisoned.
You're delusional... More pets and people are killed by domestic manufacturers than from Chinese manufacturers. Colorado cantaloup? Strawberries? Diamond Pet food? Natures Recipe Pet food? Peanut butter? Way too many to mention. All killers baby!
Jim.. you are right. We regulate, inspect, create new laws, "oversight" and departments for everything from lightbulbs, toilet flushes, banking regulations, traffic lights and other "feel good" crap but when it comes to the food we eat, feed our pets and kids... our idiots in charge look the other way.
I remember years ago that the Houston School district actually tried to claim that Ketchup was a vegetable to save a few bucks....... they got away with it for a few years but it caught up with them. But when I was growing up in Michigan, the schools regularly got the "seconds" and "close dated" milks , dairy and bread products... it was a way of "saving tax dollars" back then. It wasn't unusual in grade school to get a sour milk... they would give us a "fresh" one and send us back to eat. And we were paying for our meals. Who knows what the "poor" kids were getting.............?
Let's see how long their unsustainable model lasts. And they have no "rich" to tax to death either......
I remember doing a story when I was in College 35 years ago and sneaking into the kitchen. Didn't know there was such a thing as "Grade D Beef." And these were students who were paying for their meals..... and we often wondered why there was a discinct lack of Seagulls on "Cornish Game Hen" day........
This is why people should not buy products from China, the money from the products don't go to the people but to the big government that uses money that is made to build up an arsenal. Children are starving for them to arm themselves. I try to always look at where products are made, and I try to not buy from China, they own enough of the USA thanks to USA borrowing millions from China.
Don't we send them enough money, and Its the american way
I believe that children should not suffer--now on the other end of the spectrum is China's ever burgeoning population with parents that can't provide for their own children. The problem is world wide, Africa, India, Mexico, and here in the United States as well. I can only speak as a taxpayer--I don't have much more to give-I can't work for all my money to go into taxes and insurance. We are barely scraping by ourselves. I think "adults" have to think more about having children in the first place and their ability to afford and provide for them. China has never cared about anything except being a super power by shear force of population and their own government. They aren't going to care about overpopulation in their own country and they aren't going to care about how they feed or care for them either, even the children.
China has a one child policy. I think they are doing more population control then any other country.
This is why Chinese students are falling behind.
I know I am showing my age, but I remember when the US had a food surplus program and that food was sent to public schools where meals were actually prepared from scratch. I remember how good the gravy was on the mashed potatoes and the women who cooked for the Fairfield, Texas School District. I remember the smells and happy meals with my friends in the fifth grade. I remember the meals latter when we moved to Buffalo, Texas being equally satisfying.
More nearly in the present, I was out of the US for about a decade and took a job teaching when I returned about 2002. Two things impressed me. One was in the schools that prepared their own food, many children tossed the whole tray if it was not as tasty as the junk food they carried with them all day. The other was that in most schools some fast food outlet like Chic-fill-a had a contract to provide food and the lunch room looked like the fast food court at the mall. I am curious which picture was used to show American school lunches, one of fast food takeout or one of all the salt and sugar foods in the kids backpacks?
China clearly needs to go down the road to reform, but I wonder what we are really getting for our money in the US.
Those kids actually got tasty, healthy lunches from a school cafeteria, seriously? My school's healthy options was a pb and j sandwich and an iceberg lettuce "salad". The other two lunch options were a burger that was still in the plastic bag it was frozen in, and pizza that had puddles of grease on it.
I brought my own yummy, healthy lunch and everyone was always jealous. :)
Those chinese kids need to eat like the American kids so they can get grossly obese too!
What's the big deal? We are moving in that direction with the Republican vision of a financially sound America
What happened to the arsenic rice? Did the stale bread and expired milk take it's place?
If you steal from the mouths of children who wouldn't these officials steal from if the allegations are true? That is lowest of the low.
This story has nothing to do with grammar, republicans, democrats, communism, Obama, Romney, Walmart, quality of life, immigration, illegal immigrants, Twinkies, Nestle, melamine, U.S, CEOs, birth control, sex education, the Keystone Pipeline, U.S. taxes, the Federal Reserve, Bain Capital, origins of the English language, kidnapping or the illegal sex trade.
It's amazing just how few of the comments have anything to do with the story about some people stealing from a school lunch program and children suffering as a result of the greed.
After the executions of the Chinese management that allowed melamine in infant formula, maiming and killing scores of Chinese babies, I would have to hope none of them would "go there" again with melamine. It was bad enough they did that to American pets (added to food because melamine gives a false higher protein content reading), but they did it to their own citizens' baby formula.
The Chinese culture is little more than a badly dubbed kung fu movie. They are corrupt to the bone and always have been.
Don't feed your pets anything from China ... or your kids.
This same thing is happening here in the USA on a much smaller scale but happening no less. It will increase as the middle class is slowly wiped out. We are not far from a China like country ourselves and by the time people wake up to do something about it, it will be to late. Actually in my opinion, it is already to late!
Say it isn't so..corruption in a perfect communist state??? And here I thought capitalism had a monopoly on corruption! The only difference between the two is that in China they execute persons accused of corruption against the state; in the US we give them bonuses!
uhhh, we have a problem or two in the united states...substandard schooling,healthcare issues.....petting zoos at state fairs causing deadly virus's to be spread...i know lets worry about another country giving their own people foods that may be substandard and or even dangerous.....whats going on people...by the way did i mention theres a war going on ? i know next thing lets worry about is what Justin Bieber ,or is it Paris HIlton or ...oh what ever
I love the "free" $2.86" meal.. I paid for that! It isn't free... I am just a rich idiot who pays for kids to be fed whose own parents are too ignorant to wear condoms or take the pill.. Free..... I love it! Private school tuition for my kids is $5k a year.. My local public school alots $5300 a year for its students... Who is getting ripped off here? I KNOW my kids will run the show because they will be educated and responsible.. Free....lol..... Sad... I make my kids lunches every day.. They don't get a hot lunch.. I make a killer lunch every day and send it.. WTF is wrong with parents? Nanny state raising your kids here and in China..Pathetic.
I understand you God given right to have children. But if you can not feed yourself, why are you bringing another person into this word to suffer along with you. I know,I know, women have very little rights when it comes to speaking up/refusing marriage or sex.......but this question swings both ways. Not only in China..but throughout the world.
Maybe the GOP and conservatives need to ditch the anti abortion gig... Seriously, we are paying the bill for these absolute losers to have children when they KNOW before they FUC* ( not making love by the way) that they can't take care of themselves so clearly they can't take care of children. Time to give them $1,000 per abortion.. Take the money AWAY from Planned Parenthood and make it a business.. After all it is just tissue and not a human so... And they are mostly poor and minorities getting abortions now... So, lets pay them to have sex and have abortions.. Why pay them to have children? The children generally contribute nothing like their parents so what is the point of "talking tissue" on the planet that I have to raise for 80 years? GOP... Lets pay the losers to abort!
Regarding the Chinese and ourselves---it is not that we are any different--it is just that we have regulations that attempt to keep us honest---------some people would like to have these regulations removed for obvious reasons!!