Angry in the Great White North

The New York Times is reporting that the Chinese government has not only confirmed the presence of the Aqua Dots contamination, the government has also moved against the manufacturer:

The Chinese government announced late Saturday that it had confirmed the presence of poison on toy beads exported around the world, while in the United States, the Consumer Product Safety Commission said that seven more children had been sickened.

The Chinese government’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine also identified the factory that manufactured the beads, the Wangqi Product Factory in the southeastern Chinese city of Shenzhen, and said that the factory’s export license had been suspended.

The Chinese response to the poisonous toy beads represents an unusually swift reaction, and a contrast with other recent cases of recalled products from China, when the Chinese government has moved more slowly and been more defensive.

The Chinese got lucky. The big melamine contamination scare affected pet food. Though it is a terrible thing to loose a beloved pet, it does not bear thinking about what would have happened if children were dying by the hundreds or thousands. The Chinese handled that with what was their standard approach: delay, deny, dispute.

And after all the bad press and the repeated recalls of tires and toys and food and toiletries, the Chinese have finally figured out how to respond to situations like this.

Maybe in another ten years or so, people might start to trust Chinese-made products.

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