China's consumer-safety agency, at the urging of U.S. and European officials, plans to tighten product-safety regulations in an effort to stamp out defective and dangerous exports and to ease trade tensions between China and the U.S.
Chinese manufacturers will be held accountable for the safety of their products, said Zhi Shuping, head of the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, in a meeting Tuesday with European and U.S. counterparts. The government aims to provide them with safety and testing standards created in cooperation with the U.S. and the European Union. Regulators are particularly eager to rid products of materials containing high levels of caustic metal, such as lead and cadmium.
The three regional agencies plan to jointly create the new guidelines in the next six months, exchanging technical expertise.
"I emphasize that the U.S., Europe, and China will take shared responsibility to protect consumers," said Mr. Zhi.
The agreement comes after U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairman Inez Tenenbaum, during a visit to China this week, pressed Chinese officials to step up oversight, citing a recent spate of tainted Chinese drywall. The tainted drywall caused health problems for many U.S. consumers who had it installed in homes built in a rush of construction after Hurricane Katrina battered the coast along the Gulf of Mexico in 2005.
One company, Knauf Plasterboard Tianjin Co., a Chinese-German joint-venture, has agreed to pay for 300 home repairs.
Regulatory measures undertaken by China already have improved conditions, but more needs to be done, said Ms. Tenenbaum. Four out of five recalls of children's products still come from China, she added.
China also hopes, in preparation for the holiday shopping season, to avoid a repeat of toy recalls that occurred two years ago, when high levels of lead were found in toys exported to the U.S., damaging trade in subsequent years.
John Dalli, European Commissioner for Health and Consumers, requested more cooperation to standardize import and export controls and complaints. "We have to look at how we can solve problems that are no longer national but global," he said.
The U.S. Toy Industry Association suggested that the CPSC's focus should be on individual companies bringing products to market in the U.S., regardless of whether those companies are based in the U.S. or elsewhere. "It's not countries that make toys, it's companies," said spokesman Stacy Leistner. Chinese manufacturers make 80% of the toys sold in the U.S.
Some factories are feeling pressure. Dongguan Hayidai Toys Co., a company in the southern Chinese city of Dongguan that makes toys licensed by DreamWorks Animation SKG, has recently increased testing on materials and product functionality. That has pushed up production costs at a time when orders are unpredictable, said the company's chairman, Xiao Senlin.
Common international standards would be welcomed, Mr. Xiao said, as the different standards in various regions burden an already pressed industry.