If there is still any question whether China has finally joined the so-called industrialized world, the current diet-aid scandal should put it to rest. Only an industrialized nation with a population that eats enough food on a daily basis to worry about extra kilos can support an industry dedicated to getting rid of those kilos.
"Dieting," to use the teeth-gratingly inappropriate but nevertheless globally accepted term for "trying to lose weight," is a concept that now cuts across all cultures, or, at least, all cultures that have access to satellite dishes and produce local editions of Cosmopolitan and Premiere. If China has the Asian edge in the diet industry, it isn't because of its rocket-fueled GDP, but because of the centuries-old tradition of Chinese medicine.
Of course, the Japanese women who bought the diet treatments that are being linked to deaths from liver failure did not do so mainly because the treatment was Chinese. They bought it because it was yet another method that was rumored to work. But the China angle certainly didn't hurt.
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