Bitter pill: China scandal scandal sparks fury, roils markets

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A vaccine scandal in China, which has prompted angry reactions from the world's largest drug market.

Shares in Chinese vaccine makers and biotech firms fell across the board on Monday after Premier Li Keqiang slammed Changsheng Biotechnology

Changsheng has been discovered to be a child of the world in China, China, China, China, China, China, China, China, China, China promote its vaccines globally.

While there have been no known reports of people being harmed by the vaccine, the regulator has been switched to production and recall after the scandal.

The case has gone viral in China, where sensitivity and food safety are extremely high after a scandal over the last decade. Sina Weibo on Monday is one of the most hotly discussed topics on microblogging.

A hashtag related to the case that it was more than 600 million times by mid-afternoon on Monday, although some reports were taken by censors.

"All my friends are freaking out with this vaccine case, everyone is scared. It's a big issue with China's food and drug regulation, "wrote Cheng Cheng Weibo under the handle 1988 Cheng Hongyu.

"Yesterday it was milk powder, today vaccines. What would it be tomorrow? "Another wrote, referring to a major scandal in 2008 when several infants died after industrial chemical melamine was added to milk powder to raise protein levels.

LI CALLS FOR PROBE

First Li called for an immediate investigation into the Changsheng case in a statement posted on the government's website late on Sunday, urging severe punishment for those implicated. He added the public needed clear information.

"We will resolutely crack down on the law and endanger the lives of peoples, resolutely punish lawbreakers according to the law, and resolutely and severely criticize dereliction of duty in supervision," he said.

According to the China Food and Drug Administration, Changsheng fabricated production records and product inspection records, and arbitrarily changed process parameters and equipment, in "serious violations" of the law.

Changsheng apologized in a regulatory filing on Monday and said the suspension of its vaccine would hit its finances. It added some regional disease control agencies had suspended some of its other vaccines.

The firm said it was the risk of being investigated by China's securities regulator.

Changsheng shares, which resumed trading on Monday afternoon after being suspended in the morning, were down 10 percent. They have slumped 47 percent since mid July. The wider CSI 300 healthcare index was down about 5 percent.

PUBLIC HEALTH CRISIS

The Changsheng case is the latest in a slew of scandals that has plagued China's pharmaceutical industry in recent years.

A regulator in the northeastern province of Jilin, where Changsheng was based, revealed on Friday that the company had 252,600 substandard DPT vaccines to inoculate children against diphtheria, whooping cough and tetanus.

Another company Wuhan Institute of Biological Products was also involved in the DPT vaccine issue. Earlier, in 2016, Chinese police busted a gang for selling around $ 90 million worth of illegal vaccines on the black market.

Marina Cui – a 25-year-old mother from the southwestern Yunnan province whose five-month old child took a DPT vaccine last week – said the latest revelations had made her worried about the overall safety of vaccines.

"The recent fake vaccine scandal has really made me very scared," she said, adding that she wanted information about authorities, rather than people with little knowledge or expertise about stirring up parents' emotional concerns.

The country's official newspaper China Daily has changed its mind in the case of the Changsheng case.

The government wants to let the public know it "will punish any wrongdoers without mercy", the paper wrote in an editorial.

Xinhua ran an editorial calling for strict punishment for all violations and for regulators to tighten oversight of the industry.

The state-run Global Times also weighed in, saying the case had "sparked nationwide outrage, (and) could pose serious challenges for a domestic