SHANGHAI, China - A Mattel toy executive apologized to China Friday, saying design flaws, not manufacturing practices, were responsible for many of the recent problems with toys and that the company had unnecessarily recalled some toys containing lead.
The conversation, which took place during a meeting in Beijing between Thomas Debrowski, Mattel’s executive vice president for worldwide operations, and Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, was reported by the official Xinhua news agency.
In the eight-paragraph report, China said Mattel “admitted” that its recalls were “overly inclusive” and that it “admitted” that the “vast majority” of toys that were recalled were due to design flaws rather than problems with Chinese manufacturing practices.
“Mattel takes full responsibility for these recalls and apologizes personally to you, the Chinese people, and all of our customers who received the toys,” Debrowski said to Li, head of China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.
He added that the “vast majority of those products that were recalled were the result of a design flaw in Mattel’s design, not through a manufacturing flaw in China’s manufacturers.”
This summer, the U.S. toymaker Mattel issued three separate recalls of toys from China - more than 21 million in all, featuring characters such as Barbie, Big Bird and Elmo. Some of the toys contained excessive amounts of lead and that received heavy media coverage. Overall, however, more recalls involved design flaws, such as tiny magnets that can seriously injure children if swallowed.
The company also issued a statement Friday saying the lead-related recalls were “overly inclusive, including toys that may not have had lead in paint in excess of the U.S. standards,” the Associated Press reported.
The Xinhua report was the latest in a series issued by the Chinese government that signals a new public relations strategy that plays up evidence that it is being treated unfairly. In recent weeks, China has sought to use the words of governments or companies that have previously accused China of maintaining lax safety standards to support China’s own assertions that not all the bans and recalls of its products around the world are justified.
In several other cases during the past month, China has sought to show that accusations turned out to be exaggerated or just plain wrong.
On Sept. 7, following a meeting between Indonesian and Chinese officials over Chinese candy that allegedly contained excessive levels of formaldehyde, China put out a statement stating: “Indonesian authorities yesterday acknowledged that formaldehyde exists naturally in food and agreed to conduct further investigations into its recent ‘public warnings’ about allegedly contaminated food products, a visiting delegation said in Beijing.”
“The Indonesian team, consisting of members from three state institutions, said it ‘regretted the report,’ “ it continued.
At that same meeting, China said, it promised to re-evaluate its decision to ban Indonesian seafood.
On Aug. 31, a few weeks after reports surfaced in New Zealand of children suffering burns while wearing sleepwear imported from China, state media played up the fact that a testing laboratory there had shown that the pajamas passed flammability tests. The headline in the China Daily announcing this news trumpeted, “New Zealand: China-made PJs safe.”
China is a key export market for New Zealand, which is famous for its butter, cheese and other dairy products.
