I am not sure you understood what he meant? Do you know about the abhorrent building practices in China? Tofu dreg? That is how some make money. The consequences are about as bad as it gets. As long as the can sweep it under the carpet nothing happens. Huge backlash would be 100'000s or perhaps 10x more protesting or something else they can not easily silence. That is absolutely not good in any way. Like dumping dangerous waste and only getting in trouble when the kid of the Mayor gets sick.

That's not what he said. There's a difference between crimes that can't easily be traced to you and crimes that trigger outrage against you. China acts against the latter. Much of their consumer rights enforcement is about appeasement, not about actual rights, so you only see big action when there's scandals about serious harm and people effectively being robbed. And you better not talk about it when it's "done".