GUANGZHOU - US toy
giant Mattel's recent apology and the arrest by
Chinese police of four people alleged to have
supplied substandard paints have proved too late
to help Chinese toymakers already financially
damaged by US recalls of millions of their
products.
Thomas A Debrowski, Mattel's
executive vice president for worldwide operations,
said in a meeting with Chinese product safety
chief Li Changjiang, "The vast majority of those
products recalled were the result of a design flaw
in Mattel," and not
because of flawed
manufacturing in China.
Nevertheless,
operations of one Chinese toymaker have come to a
full stop after its US partner Mattel recalled
about a million lead-tainted toys.
More
than 2,500 employees with the Lida Plastic Toys
company, a longtime contract manufacturer of
Mattel based in southern China's Guangdong
province, are still temporarily laid off without
pay since the world's largest toy company
announced the recall early last month. Export
business was suspended and toys worth about 50
million yuan (US$6.6 million) have been
overstocked, resulting in a halt of capital
inflow, said Xie Yuguang, board chairman of Lida.
Construction of three factories and a new
dorm for short-term employees was also forced to
stop.
Seeing no way out, Lida's former
boss Cheung Shu-hung, a Hong Kong businessman in
his 50s, hanged himself on August 11 after paying
salaries due to all employees and sending them
home. Workers said Cheung was well respected by
his employees, and it is a pity that the "good
man" who had been in charge of Lida's management
since 1993 could not realize his dream of business
expansion.
It was estimated that the
factory, which had been producing toys to Mattel
for more than 10 years without any bad records,
would suffer a 30 million yuan loss.
"We
had been trusting our subcontractors and failed to
conduct tests on paint materials," said Xie.
Initial investigation showed that Zhongxin
factory, based in Dongguan city, Guangdong, had
fabricated a safe-quality license for color
powders - the key component for producing paint -
that contained excessive lead. Chinese police have
detained four suspects who are alleged to have
supplied substandard paint to Lida.
"The
four suspects can expect criminal sentences," Li
Changjiang, director of the General Administration
of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine,
said in a meeting last Friday with Debrowski.
Li said more than 300 domestic toymakers
have had their business licenses suspended or
revoked in a national quality overhaul.
Debrowski apologized to Li and the Chinese
people for the inconvenience Mattel had caused.
A press release from Mattel said a total
of 17.4 million toys were recalled because of
loose magnets and those recalled because of
impermissible levels of lead numbered 2.2 million.
Mattel's annual toy output stands at nearly 800
million.
"Mattel does not require Chinese
manufacturers to be responsible for the
magnet-related recalls due to design problems," it
said, adding that the company improved the design
in January to prevent the magnets from falling
off.
It also admitted that Mattel's
lead-related recalls were "overly inclusive", as
the company was "committed to applying the highest
standards of safety for its products".
Mattel said it understood how the recalls
had damaged the reputations of Chinese
manufacturers.
"We take responsibility for
the toys we made," said Xie, while expressing
regret that Mattel's latest apology could not help
Lida get out of its predicament.
About 70%
of toys in Guangdong are made for overseas clients
according to their design and requirements, said
Zhang Xiaolue, an official with the Guangdong
Provincial Administration of Quality Supervision,
Inspection and Quarantine.
Guo Zhuocai,
vice chairman with the China Toy Association
(CTA), said: "Both sides should shoulder the
responsibility of supervising the whole process of
production, including material quality."
Xie blamed foreign media for playing up
the quality issue, something that placed Lida in a
hopeless situation. "Mattel revealed the name of
our company to the public under great pressure
from the media, which made us the target of the
event," said Xie.
The recall of
substandard products is not unusual in the US
market, as the US Consumer Product Safety
Commission announced some 30 recalls in July, said
Li Zhuoming, vice chairman of Guangdong Provincial
Toy Association.
The media loudly
publicized recalled Chinese goods, but paid less
attention to some non-Chinese products that even
caused injuries, Li claimed.
A senior
official with the European retail giant Carrefour
on Tuesday called on foreign media to stop
exaggerating quality problems of Chinese products,
while also saying that such reports would not
affect Carrefour's products in China.
Jean-Luc Chereau, adviser to the chairman
of the management board of the Carrefour Group and
president of the Carrefour (China) Foundation for
Food Safety, told a symposium held in southwestern
China's Sichuan province that more than 95% of
goods sold in Carrefour's Chinese outlets come
from local suppliers, and 99% of them are up to
safety and quality standards.
"When a case
of substandard products occurred in China, media
coverage on the case often led to an impression
that all Chinese products had problems, which
could not reflect the whole situation and should
be contained," said Chereau.
He said he is
happy to see the Chinese government's awareness of
the significance of quality control and the
efforts it has made. "China has already improved
the quality of its products by a great deal," said
Chereau.
China is the world's largest toy
manufacturer, exporting 22 billion toys last year,
about 60% of the world's total.
China has
been paying great attention to safety and quality
of toy products, according to officials with the
CTA and the China Chamber of Commerce for Imports
and Exports of Light Industrial Products and
Arts-Crafts.
The two organizations have
pledged to strengthen the quality inspection of
Chinese goods and called on foreign toymakers and
importers also to improve their self-supervision.
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