China declares 'special war' on shoddy goods

LETS STOP BUYING OUR FOOD PRODUCTS FROM CHINA!

China has stepped up its campaign to restore confidence in the "Made in China" label over the past week while also striking back at critics who have called its goods shoddy or dangerous.
Responding to a series of high-profile recalls and product safety scandals this year, Beijing introduced a new food and toy recall system last week and also announced what it called a "special war" to crack down on poor quality products and unlicensed manufacturers.

Moving swiftly with an army of inspectors, the government said it had begun nationwide inspections of farms, groceries, restaurants and other manufacturing operations in an effort to root out fake and substandard goods.

Regulators claim that in recent months, they have busted up scores of counterfeit drug makers and unlicensed toy producers, and criminal networks that make everything from fake bird flu medicine and sham Viagra to counterfeit toothpaste.

Indeed, beginning last weekend, regulators here also said food packages that did not contain a quarantine label certifying them as safe were blocked from being exported.

"This is a special war to protect the safety and interests of the general public, as well as a war to safeguard the Made in China label and the country's image," Deputy Prime Minister Wu Yi said at a news conference Friday.

Trying to persuade the international community of its commitment to improving consumer product safety after a series of scandals involving everything from tainted pet food ingredients and toxic toothpaste to toys coated with lead paint, the government even offered foreign journalists escorted tours Tuesday of a toy factory and toy testing lab in southern China's Guangdong Province, where most of the country's toys are produced.

The government hoped the tour would demonstrate that safeguards had been put into place.
The bold moves and tough rhetoric suggest that China is growing increasingly worried about the possibility of trade sanctions or further damage to its international profile heading into 2008, when Beijing is host to the Summer Olympics.

But the government has also shown its resolve to fight back against critics of its booming exports, many of whom Beijing has labeled trade protectionists.

Last week, for instance, China said it had blocked imports of American wood packaging material after finding them contaminated with what inspectors said were "worms and other creatures."
Earlier this year, Chinese regulators rejected imports of American meat, Indonesian seafood and other products from the Philippines, South Korea, Germany, France and Spain, saying those countries also shipped shoddy and tainted goods, even Evian water tainted with high levels of bacteria.

Experts said that not since the SARS, or Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, hit China in 2003, has the government moved so aggressively to respond to critics with such a forceful global public relations campaign.

But experts say regulators here are facing daunting challenges in trying to overhaul a corrupt and ineffective regulatory system that is ill equipped to control a marketplace teeming with unlicensed operations and entrepreneurs willing to cut corners to make a fatter profit.

"They're very concerned about the reputational damage to the China brand," said Arthur Kroeber, a longtime China observer and publisher of China Economic Quarterly, an economics research outfit based in Beijing. "But the reality is this is a vast problem, involving hundreds of thousands of factories, which are hard to police."

The government has also begun a campaign aimed at the domestic market or Chinese citizens who face the greatest risk of being exposed to substandard goods.

In recent weeks, Beijing's largest state-run television network has been broadcasting a special called "Believe in Made in China," which features interviews with regulators, in-depth reports on China's biggest companies and segments on "foreigners who buy Chinese goods."

A promotion for one special called it "fighting to save the reputation of Made in China."
Still, most of China's efforts have been aimed at the international community. And so in recent weeks, government officials and diplomats have called news conferences, held high-level talks with Western officials and also briefed foreign reporters on the drastic changes they say are under way here.

"The government is really, really serious, and you will see concrete results by the end of this year," Kuang Weilin, China's deputy consul general in New York said at a U.S. news conference last Thursday. "Officials will be held accountable for what happens."

Chinese officials are likely to take such a threat seriously, given the execution in July of China's former top food and drug regulator for taking bribes to approve untested medicine.

Beijing insists that improvements are already being seen. And while China has long insisted that 99 percent of the country's exports to the United States, Europe and Japan are safe, the government has at times acknowledged huge problems in product safety.

After government investigators found that Chinese companies had exported tainted pet food ingredients and toys coated with lead paint, they closed factories and even detained managers.
But the recalls continue to come, not just from the United States but from a growing number of other countries around the world.

Two weeks ago, for instance, New Zealand said it was investigating reports about what some called "chemical pajamas," Chinese made clothing that some scientists said contained dangerous levels of toxic formaldehyde.

And late last week, Canada announced it was recalling thousands of pencils made in China because of fears they were coated with too much lead.

Beijing, however, has made food safety one of its first initiatives. The government says it plans to spend $1.1 billion to improve food and drug safety supervision by 2010. The government also said that under the new recall system announced last week producers would be held accountable for products that posed a danger to public safety.

The government even issued a lengthy "white paper" on food safety last month and said it would begin offering rewards to those who blow the whistle on bad producers.
Regulators have unleashed a flood of new regulations and initiatives in recent months, including a promise to create national standards to govern things like cooking oils and the fillings of moon cakes.

And if anyone has doubts about food safety during the Olympics, Beijing said it was already acting: White mice will be used to test most foods served to athletes, and pigs are already being bred organically, in secret locations. Global position system, or GPS, technology is being employed to track the whereabouts of some animals.

At home, however, consumers seem to be suggesting they have heard it all before. When China Daily, the country's English language newspaper, recently asked consumers whether they believed most food in China was safe, 41 percent answered: "No."