BEIJING (AP) — A four-month campaign to improve the quality of Chinese products has been successful and has helped boost the credibility of the ''Made in China'' label, an official said Wednesday.
The aggressive crackdown and public relations drive was part of China's efforts to restore international confidence in its goods after potentially dangerous levels of chemicals were found in exports like toothpaste and toys.
''All the rectification goals have been achieved on schedule,'' Li Changjiang, head of the General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, was quoted as saying on the government's Web site. Li was speaking at a Cabinet meeting in Beijing.
During the campaign, which began in August and ended in December, 98,000 food manufacturers were certified and 120,000 small food businesses — the heart of many of China's chronic safety woes — signed pledges to meet quality standards, Li said.
China has in the past launched large-scale public relation campaigns to mollify global concern, as it did during the SARS epidemic in 2002-03. But because the country is so large and the government still lacks transparency when dealing with sensitive issues, it is not always possible to gauge the effectiveness of the campaigns.
Some 1,187 cases involving the production and sale of bogus food, pharmaceuticals and agriculture products were investigated, Li said without giving details.
In all, 1,480 people have been detained in those cases and another 64 have been arrested in schemes involving counterfeit blood protein and vaccines for the blue ear pig disease, Li said.
''The international image of 'Made in China' has been strongly upheld,'' he said.
The campaign has also focused attention on the country's recurring problems with domestic food safety, particularly as Beijing prepares to welcome hundreds of thousands of visitors for the Summer Olympics in August.
Past food scares have centered around fake milk powder that led to the deaths of at least a dozen babies and the use of the banned cancer-causing industrial dye Sudan Red to color egg yolks.
Earlier this week, Pu Changcheng, the vice minister at Li's agency, said food for the Olympics will be highly scrutinized and supplied only by approved companies.
The food will be distributed from specially designated centers, and will undergo repeated inspections from production to consumption, he said.
