China has confirmed its international commitment to guarantee the quality of its bulk exports, a senior official in the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said on Wednesday.

Wang Xin, director of the administration's department for supervision of inspections, said the country was committed to a range of actions, including enhancing cooperation with the international community, to guarantee the supervision and inspection of bulk export commodities.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Wang said that current agreements between the administration and other countries, including the United States and members of the European Union, ensured timely quality feedback on exported products.

The feedback provided enough evidence to punish those factories that produced low-quality products, said Wang.

The administration released a report saying that since October 817 batches of uncertified bulk export commodities worth US$153 million had been confiscated by its law enforcement officials. Most of the products were clothes, shoes, suitcases, furniture and toys, he said.

Wang added that the administration had increased the supervision of the products' quality by examining each bulk export batch.

The director of Egypt's General Organization for Export and Import Control, Mohamed S.A. Shafeek, applauded China's efforts in quality supervision. During a business trip to China in November, Shafeek said that products made in China had become more popular with Egyptian consumers.

Furthermore, Wang said, the administration had established a system which offers manufacturers with a good record more preferential policies and better support, while severely punishing those who did not improve their standards.

He admitted that the quality of some low-end non-durable consumer goods was still unsatisfactory, although his administration had never stopped trying to maintain the credibility of the world's biggest exporting country.

The campaign, launched by the administration in October, to crack down on counterfeit products and eliminate violations of intellectual property rights, mainly concentrated on automotive auxiliary products, cell phones and bulk export commodities, according to Yan Fengmin, head of the administration's law enforcement department.

On Nov 22, the administration's bureau in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province, confiscated 3,020 counterfeit purses branded as Louis Vuitton and other raw materials worth 10 million yuan (US$1.5 million), Feng said.

Ten days later in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei province, the local bureau confiscated 9,291 cases of counterfeit auto piston rings worth 7.2 million yuan, he said.

Wang Qian, a professor at the Intellectual Property School of the East China University of Political Science and Law, said cell phones and automotive auxiliary products were popular with counterfeiters due to their high profit margins.

"The confiscated products might include both fake products and smuggled goods," he said, adding that the administration's campaign not only fought intellectual property rights violations but also considered the public's safety and interest.

"The low-quality cell phones and automotive auxiliaries might harm public health and put drivers' lives in danger," he said.

(China Daily December 30, 2010)