News Story of the Day, Without Comment

The Chinese government acknowledged widespread quality-control and safety problems for domestically sold goods ranging from food to baby clothing to grass-cutting equipment, a reminder of the toll on its own consumers at a time of increasing foreign scrutiny of imports from China.

Beijing's statistics-filled assessment had a sobering main finding: Nearly one-fifth of the sold-in-China products that were studied failed to meet the country's quality standards.

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Separately, the Ministry of Health yesterday announced a recall of two brands of diapers popular in rural areas because of excessive amounts of fungus, the Associated Press reported.

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Yesterday, the state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Li Yuanping, a senior official in charge of imported and exported food safety at the quality-control watchdog, as saying that "99% of food exported to the United States was up to safety standards over the past two years, which is a very high percentage."

At the same time, an editorial in the state-run China Daily newspaper said food exports have sometimes failed foreign guidelines "not because the food itself was of low quality but because the standards we use may be lower."

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"These are not isolated cases," Han Yi, director of the watchdog's quality-control and inspection department, said at a news conference at the time, according to a report in the China Daily.

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