CHINA has revoked the export licenses of 600 toymakers to ensure product safety and defend the “Made in China” brand around the world.

    The country’s top quality watchdog has inspected more than 3,000 factories that supply toys to overseas markets during a four-month nationwide campaign, Pu Changcheng, deputy chief of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said yesterday.

    Stricter supervision standards have been established for toymakers. This requires companies, especially those exporting toys, to run quality inspection checks on all their products, Pu said.

    The administration will also check toys made according to designs and quality standards provided by other countries to ensure they are safe, Pu added.

    Chinese industries have been battered by a raft of reports on substandard products ranging from drugs to toys.

    More than 19 million China-made toys were recalled in 2007, many by United States-based giant Mattel, after reports said some items were contaminated with lead paint. Others had small magnets that children might swallow.

    In the wake of product safety scandals, the Central Government responded by introducing a new recall system last summer, embarking on a product quality campaign and offering intensive training courses to domestic toy manufacturers.

    Pu said that some of the toy recalls were caused by design flaws of toy companies in other countries and that these items are usually not sold in China. He added that others were the result of changes in quality standards in other countries.

    (SD-Agencies)