Actual foreign direct investment (FDI) in China maintained
steady growth in the first eight months and government agencies are
investigating the latest batch of "Made in China" toy recalls, a
senior commerce official said yesterday.
The Ministry of Commerce approved 24,848 foreign-invested
enterprises in the past eight months, with actual spending rising
12.79 percent year-on-year to $41.95 billion, ministry spokesman
Wang Xinpei told a news conference.
For August alone, realized FDI in China jumped to $5.02 billion,
up 11.87 percent from a year earlier. The ministry did not release
the statistics for contracted foreign investments.
Wang said the Ministry of Commerce had dispatched teams to
Dongguan and Shenzhen in Guangdong Province after it learned about
the latest toy recall case in the US.
Toy giant Mattel recalled around 848,000 toys earlier this month
- its third recall of Chinese products this summer - because of the
high lead content in the paints used.
The latest recall follows a similar move last month, when the
company recalled 18 million Chinese-made products worldwide over
high lead levels and small magnets that have allegedly injured at
least three children.
"Our initial investigation shows all the recalled toys are
products under original equipment manufacturing and were exported
in processing trade. Three companies in Guangdong were involved in
Mattel's third recall," Wang said.
He said the products in question were made according to US
specifications, adding that the government will conduct further
investigations and punish whoever is accountable.
"These are stray cases, considering the fact that there are
8,000 toymakers in China and the quality of China-made toys in
general is reliable," Wang said. "As toys concern children's
health, we are treating each case seriously, regardless of whether
the case is one out of a hundred or one out of a thousand."
The government also urged toymakers to improve their quality
control system to meet both Chinese quality standards and those set
by importing countries.
Large-scale training courses on quality enhancement are being
held in Jiangsu and other provinces famous for toy exports.
Canadian business professor Hari Bapuji recently said most
recalls of toys made in China are due to design errors, not
manufacturing flaws.
"We should be asking the toymakers: 'Are you guys learning from
the errors you are making? What are your systems to test? What are
your systems to make sure that an error doesn't get repeated in the
future?'" he said in an interview on Canadian Television
recently.
(China Daily September 14, 2007)
