China's about-face on product
safety By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - Dogged by a plethora of reports
in the foreign media highlighting problem Chinese
goods and worried that product-safety recalls are
spiraling into a major problem for its export
juggernaut, Beijing has shifted gears to defend
its battered "Made in China" reputation.
On Wednesday, the world's largest
toymaker, Mattel, announced a massive recall of
Chinese-made toys because of excessive lead in
their paint. Reluctant to acknowledge such
problems when they
first came to light several
months ago, Chinese authorities are now daily
rounding up companies suspected of faulty
products. The safety crackdown on domestic
producers has been accompanied by a public
relations campaign aimed at international traders.
"The Chinese government pays great
attention to addressing flaws in product quality,
especially the quality of food products," Li
Changjiang, minister in charge of the General
Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection
and Quarantine, said at a specially convened press
conference.
The government's
acknowledgement of existing problems makes a
remarkable departure for a bureaucratic system
prone to cover-ups.
When a pet-food
ingredient produced in China was linked to the
deaths of cats and dogs in North America in April,
Beijing's first reaction was to deny it. "The
poisoning of American pets has nothing to do with
China," claimed a report in the Communist Party's
flagship newspaper, the People's Daily.
Export-control officials argued that food
contamination occurred both within the United
States and with US exports to China. "No
food-inspection system is foolproof," Li Yuanping,
director general of the Import and Export Food
Safety Bureau, countered at the time.
But
international worries about China's exports have
continued to mount with more and more reports
about substandard and fake products coming to
light. Since April, a slew of exports - including
toothpaste, tires, seafood and toys - have been
recalled or rejected around the world. What is
worse, mislabeled drug ingredients in Chinese
exports have been blamed for killing and injuring
people in Panama and Haiti.
As a result,
China has come under political pressure from the
US and the European Union, where politicians are
demanding assurances about the quality and safety
of Chinese exports.
After slapping
controls on China's seafood imports because of
unsafe chemical residues found in farm-raised
fish, the US administration dispatched its health
chief for talks with Chinese officials this week.
"Our US regulatory agencies are concerned
about what they see as an insufficient
infrastructure across the board in China to assure
the safety, quality and effectiveness of many
products exported to the United States," Mike
Leavitt said in Beijing on Tuesday.
Leavitt's mission to Beijing came on the
heels of a visit by the head of the EU's
consumer-protection agency, Meglena Kuneva, last
week. Kuneva urged Chinese regulators to track
down every producer of substandard goods and stop
their exports to Europe.
China's safety
woes have not been limited to Europe and North
America. Excessive antibiotic or pesticide residue
has caused bans in Japan on Chinese poultry
products, frozen spinach and tea. Hong Kong
blocked imports of turbot fish last year after
inspectors found traces of malachite green, a
possible cancer-causing chemical used to treat
fungal infections.
Last year Taiwan too
banned imports of hairy crabs from mainland China
over traces of carcinogens. This June, Russia's
federal agricultural authorities banned fish from
China because of antibiotic contamination.
Watching the volley of safety complaints,
Chinese officials have grown worried that an
all-around international campaign on problem goods
could lead to sanctions and hurt the country's
exports.
Exports and foreign investment
are the chief engines of China's booming economy.
According to World Trade Organization statistics,
China's total food exports reached US$246 billion
in 2005, which is nearly eight times the $31
billion it exported in 1980.
In a dramatic
display of concern, two weeks ago China executed
the former head of the State Food and Drug
Administration (SFDA), Zheng Xiaoyu, for accepting
bribes in return for granting government approval
for various medicines in 2005.
Experts say
several agencies involved in safety and quality
supervision, such as the SFDA and the General
Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection
and Quarantine, squabble over the division of
powers and tend to deny responsibility for
mistakes.
In recent weeks, the government
has pledged to overhaul the regulations on food
and drug safety and announced a nationwide quality
and safety inspection. This week, Beijing issued a
regulation holding local governments responsible
for any major food poisoning or other health
threat caused by contaminated or substandard food.
Yet, while aiming to publicize its actions
on safety controls, Beijing has also tried to
limit future PR fallout. Newspapers in the capital
have been warned against running negative news on
food safety, even negative articles reprinted from
newspapers in other regions, reported the Hong
Kong-based South China Morning Post this week.
Some observers are criticizing foreign
media for exaggerating food safety.
"All
these negative reports and commentaries about
'Made in China' - it all smacks of psychological
warfare," argued Zhang Guoqing, an expert on
international affairs with the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences. "It is worth reminding detractors
that China's trade surplus is a testimony to the
opportunities and attraction of the Chinese
economy."
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