Rewards may encourage whistleblowers

China will establish a system that rewards whistleblowers who expose food or drug safety problems, as a measure to improve supervision and deter violations of the law, a senior official for market regulation said on Tuesday.

Whistleblowing can play an important supplementary role in monitoring food and drug safety, based on global experience, Zhang Mao, minister of the State Administration for Market Regulation, said at an international forum on food safety cooperation during the China International Import Expo in Shanghai.

"Whistleblowers have played a role in exposing problems in most food and drug safety cases," he said, adding that a recent vaccine scandal that shocked the nation was the result of whistleblowing.