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China Says It's Cleaning Up Products, Pollution

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By MICHAEL SASSO, The Tampa Tribune

Published: December 7, 2007

TAMPA - Zheng Zeguang, the second in command at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, puts it mildly when he says he is facing "more issues" these days.

Lead in children's toys, China's massive counterfeiting problem and its rampant pollution are just a few of the issues he's defending China on lately. Zeguang, pronounced "zee-gwong," spoke before a China-U.S. trade conference Thursday sponsored by the Greater Tampa and the U.S. chambers of commerce at the University of Tampa.

Zeguang, whose official title is minister and deputy chief of mission for the Chinese Embassy, didn't try to duck the issues or pretend they don't exist. In fact, during an hourlong discussion with Tampa Bay area reporters he acknowledged that China has major challenges stemming from its blistering economic growth, which may exceed 11 percent this year. Skeptics may question China's commitment to change, but Zeguang insisted the country is making changes to make its products safer and protect American business interests abroad.

Excerpts from the interview include:

What is China doing about lead in toys and toxic chemicals in food?

We have put in place a series of measures to improve the quality, to make sure that all products coming from China are safe.

One of the measures is to make sure that we have 100 percent examination of food products leaving for the United States. I believe from September of this year we imposed 100 percent examination of food products. And secondly we are trying to bridge the gap between the quality-control and safety-control system in China and the safety-control system in United States.

How is lead getting into Chinese toys?

There is an international standard for toy quality and how much lead you can use. And of course the United States has its own standard, and the United States is also changing its standard. Some toys may be safe by European standards but may not be regarded as safe by American standards.

And there were violators, too, that produce these kinds of toy products according to the designs by a foreign company.

We're in a globalization age. These products, although they are manufactured in China, they are not designed in China. They are designed by some foreign company and they provide these designs to Chinese manufacturers. And the Chinese manufacturers have to be 100 percent correct when they make these kinds of products according to the specification provided by some foreign company.

Are you saying that foreign companies who are designing these toys are telling the Chinese manufacturers to put in lead?

Well it's part of the specifications in many cases. And they also have tests and tests. In some cases, it has to do with the design, and in some cases it has to do with manufacturing.

What is China doing about its pollution problem?

Pollution is a serious problem in many places in China, so that's why we have publicized our targets for the five-year period between 2006 and 2010.

Number one, we are reducing the energy consumption per GDP unit by 20 percent. That means every year we have to reduce energy consumption by 4 percent. It's calculated on a basis of our total GDP, but our consumption has to be reduced by 20 percent in a five-year period.

We have been closing down a lot of the polluting factories, and the emphasis of economic expansion will be on those industries that are cleaner. In the past when we had an electricity shortage, we built too many power plants. Now some of the power plants have to be closed because they are heavily polluting. About 74 percent of our energy comes from coal, and then we have natural gas, we have oil and we are building nuclear power plants.

In the next 15 years, we will build more than 30 nuclear power plants. So that's a huge market. The French president just visited China last week, and he signed a contract to build two nuclear power plants for China with French technology. The American company Westinghouse was able to get a contract for four nuclear power plants, and they will create jobs in eight different American states.

Another target is to reduce pollution and increase forestry coverage. Forestry coverage at the moment is 28 percent nationwide, and we are going to increase it to 30 percent within the five-year period.

Thirdly, we will reduce the total amount of pollutants by 10 percent within this five-year period.

What is China doing about protection of intellectual property rights?

It's a big issue, but I think the issue has become smaller and smaller because of the efforts of the Chinese side. We set up, for example, reporting centers across the country, so whenever you feel your products are being infringed upon, you can report to those centers.

We set up a special court within our court system at every level to hear IPR cases. We also have very productive exchanges between our law enforcement and U.S. law enforcement. There will be these kinds of cases for a long time to come, but I think the Chinese government believes that it is in China's interest to do a better job in protecting IPRs.

Reporter Michael Sasso can be reached at msasso@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7865.

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