Reversed Chinese retaliation?

China has been in the focus regarding doubtful delivery of goods, among textile articles to America and the EU and some joint actions have been taken by the authorities to prevent that. Now China is practising a sort of reverse retaliation in regard to inadequate deliveries of luxury goods into China

Shanghai Inspection and Quarantine Bureau has conducted on the spot inspections for 10000 batches of apparel and imitation accessories imports and the finding was that nearly 30% of such imports do not meet Chinese standards established.

Apparel imports, accessories and other luxury goods have been added last year to the Chinese Statutory Inspection Catalogue and in application of these requirements these inspections at Shanghai Port were initiated. This resulted into the inspection of 25000 batches of imported apparel and accessories, most of them were middle to high level brands in the value of estimated USD 560 million. The quality of these goods supposedly is of concern to Chinese consumers. Among 56 batches of accessories the inspectors found 33 batches of accessories non-qualifying to the set Chinese standards thus the level of approved accessories amounted to only 58.93 %. The non qualifying goods exceeded the accepted level of tolerable arsenic content by two or three times and also the led content was too high resulting in a non-qualifying ratio of 55.8 % due to adulteration and unreliable colourfastness, too high pH and formaldehyde ratio. For the two categories of apparel and accessories the rejection rate was nearly 30 % or nearly 11000 batches – and thereof 700 batches of apparel and 400 batches of accessories – were violating safety, health and environment protection levels.

The question remains if this is not a sort of a Chinese retaliation act in view of the measures taken by the EU and America against Chinese textile products and accessories discriminated in these countries. It has to be seen if these actions are not considered under these aspects by the suppliers of such goods and if this will not lead to complaints by these suppliers that China is establishing new non-tariff hurdles for such goods. It has to be noted that each country has the right to legally protect its consumers from harm.