NEW YORK—The throughfare in Flushing, Queens, is replete with the kind of shops one expects to see in overseas Chinese communities—restaurants, groceries, bubble tea cafes, more restaurants, and herbal apothecaries—but the past half-decade has seen a new mainstay amongst the crammed storefronts of Main Street: milk powder and infant formula delivery boutiques.
At JK Express, a delivery boutique that focuses on jewelry and infant formula, a clerk said that the store easily sells more than a hundred cans of infant formula per day. Most of the cans are between one and one-and-a-half pounds, and there are dozens of similar shops within a half-mile radius.
An uninformed visitor to the neighborhood might surmise that Chinese Americans in New York City had collectively caught baby fever, but only a tiny fraction of the cans of Enfamil and Similac sold there will ever be consumed in New York; most will be packed into air cargo, destined for mainland China.
China’s domestic milk and infant formula industry saw an exodus of its customers after a 2008 scandal, where at least six infants died and 13,000 children were hospitalized from drinking milk products containing melamine. It was later found that unscrupulous manufacturers added the hazardous chemical to boost the apparent protein count of their products.
There are a few reasons why Chinese parents prefer the same infant formula delivered from overseas, rather than purchasing it at a retailer. First, buying formula from overseas is cheaper due to the morass of retail and import-export red tape businesses face in China. Second, formula bought from the U.S. is inspected by the Food and Drug Administration, which has a sterling reputation among Chinese consumers. Third, online vendors are numerous, competitive, and transparent—TaoBao uses a customer ratings system similar to Amazon.
Business Booming
The Chinese regime has tried to shore up the position of its domestic milk powder firms repeatedly since the 2008 scandal. In the past two years it has levied antitrust fines on foreign brands, imposed new registration standards for sellers, and the China Dairy Industry Association published a report touting the superior quality of domestic milk powder, but to no avail.
Rejected as specious propaganda by the public, the association’s report was even roundly rebuked by the various state-controlled press outlets in China, according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post.
Meanwhile, the formula export machine in New York City shows no signs of slowing down. Last Thursday, at a Manhattan Chinatown warehouse operated by Hua Tong Express, a wholesale delivery company which takes shipping orders from individual boutiques, the operators were answering calls nonstop.
Workers, surrounded by cardboard boxes stacked two stories high, were busily packing everything from shoes and toys to diapers and, of course, infant formula, boxes and boxes of it.
Asked how the business was faring, the warehouse manager cheerfully declined to give details, citing trade secrets, before hurrying to answer another call.
Additional reporting by Frank Way, Camille Way, Hannai Cai, and Frank Fang
