Professor-peddled rice fails over trust crisis
By Echo Shan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-01-06 16:56

Something has annoyed rice professor and goodwill vendor He Huili even more than piles of unsold and high-quality pollution-free rice. What really bites her is a trust crisis among the vast multitude of consumers.

He Huili, associated professor with the Chinese Agriculture University, has just experienced a rice sales waterloo in Beijing and is seeking ways to sell out the left rice ferried from Lankao County, China's inland Henan Province. [sina]

He Huili, 35, is an associated professor with the Chinese Agriculture University and currently serves as deputy leader of impoverished Lankao County of Central China's Henan Province where the Peking University female doctorate hailed from.

At the end of 2005, the pioneering professor ferried ten tons of "green rice" as consumer-friendly new-year offering to Beijing to help fatten farmers' pockets back in Lankao. Unfortunately her ambitious sales scheme soon was dashed, as the rice was not well received on the capital market, with only 50 kg sold.

Back in 2003, when He marched a long way from Beijing to Henan to head Lankao County she took as a grass-roots platform to put into practice what she had learnt before.

"That's where my dream unfolded," recounted He "Before I planted corps and raised pigs only on a blackboard. But from that moment on I did it in a real sense."

Frowning upon the quantity of unsold rice, He said, with a deep sigh, "I feel very disappointed with the rice that is left. Maybe the intellectual can just settle in classrooms rather than the market."

On the part of He, the lack of effectual marketing is definitely a major reason for the rice sales failure. While at the other end of the trade, are customers to blame for their blind eyes at the fine rice, even those rice wrapped in a professor title?

China's agriculture study expert Wen Tiejun, who helped the professor to market the rice by writing an open recommendation letter, attributes the sales flop to customers, saying, "Fine customers are gradually fostered and we should keep enlightening them."

Real green rice products peddled by a social elite professor ended up utterly rejected by the market. It seems to be a huge loss for the rice planters who were awaiting year-end cash and a taint to an elite vender's fame.

But what if just an average wet market rice vender sold the same good rice? Would such a gloomy sale had made such a splashes that reached even newspapers? Nope, according to the Beijing-based China Youth Daily, blaming it all on a waning consumption confidence and a trust crisis.

The sales failure highlighted in a subtle way a pity for Chinese buyers as they find few things reliable and trustworthy, from so-called green rice to once highly reputed professor titles.

Against such a background many fine commodities have slid away, with inferior goods rising to capitalize in such an environment. What is most paradoxical is that the mass purchase is guided mostly by advertisements amid public curses of ads.

A consumption dilemma has taken shape during this vicious cycle, as the Commerce Ministry puts it: "No item on the nation's food market can averages a 50-percent approval rating concerning consumer's confidence in safety."

The ultimate form of trust results from a sound set of institutions, which are legally bound and share an overwhelming force among the public, said US sociologist Lin Zucker.

In the rice case, professor He resorted to an assumed trust stemming from her social status, which finally proved in vain on the market.

It also echoes Zucker's theory that an identity-borne credence, ranked as the primary in his trust list, gradually loses its appeal in a stranger society where parties involved in various social activities are strangers to one another.