Amid agonies by a string of safety issues with its exported
products and food, China opened on Tuesday a toy testing lab and
three toy factories to a group of domestic and foreign reporters to
put off the concerns.
The Jetta (China) Industry Co. Ltd, the largest toy manufacturer
the media group visited in the one-day tour with more than 10,000
employees, showed to reporters how it tested toys.
"A doll is normally tested for 10,000 times whether it can smile
and cry as designed, and we have an employee specially in charge of
testing this function," introduced a staff member from Jetta.
Details like the doll's laughing and crying time were recorded
each time it was tested. Other than that, the company also
perfected its quality control system with the tests on raw
materials, examination of designs and monitoring of the production
process.
Jetta exported 3,232 batches of toys worth more than 42 million
U.S. dollars in the first seven months of this year mainly to the
United States and European Union, with 70 percent flowing to the
former.
All located in south China's Guangdong Province, which produces
70 percent of China's exported toys, Jetta and the other two toy
factories seemed to have impressed the reporters in a positive
way.
"The tour really offered us a good opportunity. The factories we
visited today were very strict with the quality of their products
and the toys were good," said Jumpei Yoshioka, a reporter from
Japan's NHK TV station.
First time in such a trip in China, Yoshioka hoped that he could
go to more factories to get a deeper and wider knowledge of the
country's toy-making industry, which was just lashed by a toy
recall crisis.
"I want to find out whether other factories have quality
problems or are as good as these ones," he said.
In July, U.S. RC2 Corp. and Consumer Product Safety Commission
filed a recall case involving toy trains made by a Guangdong-based
company which used paint containing lead poisonous to children.
On Aug. 2, another U.S. toy company, Fisher-Price, also recalled
more than one million character toys with unqualified paint. The
producer's paint provider made the paint with fake materials.
Some small factories do have quality problems, often caused by
incaution when buying raw materials like paint, fill-in cotton and
leather, said Wang Xin, an official with the General Administration
of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) who
accompanied the media group.
"We will tighten supervision over these factories and punish
those discredited ones heavily," Wang said.
But mostly, the problems are caused by foreign brand owners'
improper designs or inconsistent testing standards among different
countries, he noted, adding that importers should share the
responsibilities in case of false designing.
TS Wong, board chairman of Jetta, pointed out that the recall
issues were just individual cases about individual companies.
China's whole toy industry is healthy and quality-guaranteed,
and our exports won't be affected, except that the recall cases
will prompt us to further improve the quality control system, Wong
said.
Cen Jianming, a staff member from Jetta, told the reporters that
the factory had a sophisticated screening process to ensure the
safety of its raw materials.
"After the paint is bought, it will be isolated in a special
room and spot checked with the standards of importing countries. If
it's unqualified, we will return the whole batch to the supplier,"
Cen said.
With a variety of products from motor-driven toys to fluffy
dolls, Jetta has an entire professional team checking hidden
defects.
"As what we have seen from the three factories, Chinese
enterprises do care about their product qualities and have strict
quality control systems," said Pascal Golomer, chief reporter from
France 2 TV station.
The media tour, co-organized by the General Administration of
Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine and State Council
Information Office, was the third of its kind in the past three
months after China was besieged by frequent product safety scares.
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The scares ranged from pet food to drugs, toothpastes, aquatic
products, toys and tyres.
The Chinese government has taken a series of measures to improve
product quality, including landmark recall systems for unsafe food
products and toys and a four-month nationwide campaign to improve
product quality initiated late in August.
(Xinhua News Agency September 5, 2007)
