Spate of product recalls fails to shake confidence in the safety of Chinese-made toys, state official insists.
Orders for Chinese toys are on the rise in the run-up to Christmas despite a wave of product recalls that have shaken confidence in the safety of Chinese-made goods, the country's product safety chief has said.
Millions of Chinese-made toys have been recalled this year, mostly because of excessive levels of lead in paint and other components, prompting complaints that lax quality controls were threatening consumers.
But Li Changjiang, the head of General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said factory owners in the southern province of Guangdong, China's manufacturing heartland, told him business was booming.
'They told me, 'Our orders are all up', the workers have to work overtime or the orders cannot be met,' Li told reporters. 'When I heard this, I was shocked.'
Problems with Chinese exports prompted the world's biggest toy maker, Mattel, to recall about 21 million of its Chinese-made toys earlier this year. A senior Mattel executive later apologised to China for the trouble the recall had caused.
But in the past few weeks another half a million toys ranging from Winnie the Pooh bookmarks to Baby Einstein blocks were recalled in the United States because of levels of lead, which can be toxic in large amounts.
Li has been spearheading China's public relations drive to restore confidence in the 'Made in China' label, rounding up manufacturers for a crash course in quality supervision and urging companies to make clear in contracts their obligations.
'These unqualified products, especially products exported through illegal channels, have affected the credibility of some Chinese products,' he said.
But he also said some of the concern abroad was driven by trade protectionism, and that the quality issue 'should not be exaggerated'.