This does have something to do with guanxi and whatnot, but the same sort of thing’s probably going on right now in Russia or Mozambique. Anywhere with limited political freedom and calamitous (rather than escalating) penalties for misbehavior. Noting motivates, or discourages, like a bullet to the head.

In fact, the high risk / high reward structure of Chinese business probably attracts psychopathic personalities who get off on it. “Cake or death?”

The Asian tendency towards distrust of strangers vs. American tendency towards trust.

You hinted at this one. Asian business model of starting out with a cheap “good enough” product, and adapting to the market and making piecemeal improvements as one goes along. Famous example: Honda motorcycles. Compare to American attempts to imagined perfection in initial offering, with eventual faltering of quality once consumer base is considered entrenched. Famous examples: Starbucks, Walmart.

The fake eggs, for instance, aren’t even cheaper to make than real eggs. It’s just that you can bang them out in bulk, while a chicken lays only so many per week. It just seems unnecessary.

Honestly, Chinese industry seems culturally equivalent to American business circa 1890, when bakers would spike bread with alum, and color candy with lead salts. Besides having no real equivalent of an FDA (it exists, it’s just not enforcing anything), there’s such a rush for profits that it seems to draw out examples of the most despicable human behavior.

On the other hand, there is also a pervasive “what could it hurt/close enough is good enough” attitude here, probably a direct result of zero health education in the provinces, the total destruction of the medical community during the Cultural Revolution, and rule by fiat for the last fifty years. A friend who works in public health has told horror stories about HIV transmission in rural clinics- needles used to inject dozens of people, mandatory drug rehab centers where the patients are not told if they’re infected, and the infamous blood-selling scandal where the plasma from multiple people was mixed together and re-infused into the donors.

Tangentially, I can sort of add fugu to the list of pantophagy. I’ve never had the sushi, but down at Decibel in New York, I’ve had grilled fugu fins in hot saki. It’s a tasty, brothy concoction, with little crispy fins floating in it, but you’ve got to finish it before it goes cold.

Mmmm…pufferfish.