China urges Samsung to better protect consumers' rights

Samsung should make earnest efforts in follow-up work to recall Galaxy Note 7 smartphones and protect the legitimate rights of Chinese consumers, an official with China's top market watchdog said Wednesday.

Samsung should take lessons from the latest cellphone recall, fulfill its responsibility as a multinational company, and prevent similar cases from happening, an unnamed official with the Consumer Protection Bureau at the State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) said in a statement.

Samsung has filed a plan with China's consumer quality watchdog to recall 190,984 Galaxy Note 7 smartphones sold on the Chinese mainland due to an overheating problem.

There have been 20 cases of Galaxy Note 7 phones catching fire or overheating on the mainland, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said Tuesday.

The bureau has called on Samsung to strengthen internal product quality control, halt the sale of products with quality defects, refund customers who have purchased the cellphones, and avoid treating customers from different countries unfairly.

The Galaxy Note 7 made its debut in August, but Samsung announced global recall plans in early September, blaming faulty battery cells. Endi