Chinese demand tougher policing of shoddy goods
Xinhua 2013-03-16 09:34
A store in Sichuan which sells fake luxury brand items. (Photo/CNS)
Chinese consumers have long been plagued by rampant production and distribution of fake goods, and on Thursday people voiced their hopes that the practice can be truly controlled with intensified inspection efforts.
Their calls come on the eve of international consumer rights day, an occasion that has made media headlines around the country.
On China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo service, a discussion organized to share experiences of being cheated or treated unfairly generated more than 60,000 comments within three days.
The national broadcaster CCTV, which is set to reveal a list of cases concerning fake and inferior goods as well as scams facing consumers in an annual program scheduled for Friday, also invited Internet users to provide information.
In scenes that China has long grown accustomed to on a periodic basis, recent days have also seen a concentration of inspection visits to markets and factories and burning of fake or inferior goods by officials.
The tightened oversight is useful and dramatic ahead of Consumer Rights Day, but the public want more to be done.
"Targeting these illegalities on just one day won't really help, and instead we should focus on product and service quality as well as consumer rights protection year round," read one Weibo entry.
Another Internet user wrote, "government agencies should beef up their inspection and control efforts, and guilty producers and traders should be severely punished for breaking the law."
These comments echoed remarks from several media reports published Thursday.
Jinbw.com.cn, a newspaper website, cited Lei Jun, an IT celebrity and national lawmaker, as saying that it has become "urgent" for China to increase producers' integrity and credibility and strengthen quality inspection.
Lei was shocked to find an advertisement in a Chinese airport explicitly stating, "If you want to buy genuine wine and liquor, please come to us," which he believes ironically reflected deep worries about food safety in the country.
"Shoddy and inferior goods have become a major social ill that needs to be addressed as a priority," he was quoted as saying.
After recurring food scandals in recent years, including melamine-tainted infant formula, pork adulterated with clenbuterol, and cooking oil recycled from leftovers in restaurant kitchens, public confidence over food safety has continued to wane.
People in China's remote countryside are more susceptible to the dangers of fake and inferior products than people in urban areas. This is because rural consumers generally opt for cheaper goods and retailers are less accessible to inspectors.
Despite China's escalating efforts to create a modern food inspection system, food safety remains a major public concern for many reasons.
Besides blaming the unethical ideology behind the bad products, many analysts have cited inefficient inspection methods –an issue partly attributed to supervisory powers being shared between different government organs – as a main cause.
The top legislature on Thursday adopted a Cabinet restructuring plan, aiming to cut bureaucracy and make the government more efficient.
Under the plan, China will combine functions and duties of the numerous existing food and drug safety oversight organs into one new department, a move that is widely believed will boost the country's food safety inspection capabilities.
