Oh no all the China basher is going to have a heart attack


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20903731/

Mattel apologizes to China over recalls
Firm takes blame for design flaws, says it pulled more toys than needed

Mark Ralston / AFP - Getty Images file
A Chinese boy holding a Mattel "Barbie and Tanner" still for sale in China despite being recalled in the U.S., at a department store in Shanghai last month. Mattel issued an extraordinary apology to China Friday, saying it was to blame for design flaws.

Updated: 50 minutes ago
BEIJING - U.S.-based toy giant Mattel Inc. issued an extraordinary apology to China on Friday over the recall of Chinese-made toys, taking the blame for design flaws and saying it had recalled more lead-tainted toys than justified.

The gesture by Thomas A. Debrowski, Mattel’s executive vice president for worldwide operations, came in a meeting with Chinese product safety chief Li Changjiang, at which Li upbraided the company for maintaining weak safety controls.

“Our reputation has been damaged lately by these recalls,” Debrowski told Li in a meeting at Li’s office at which reporters were allowed to be present.

“And 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.

Mattel ordered three high-profile recalls this summer involving more than 21 million Chinese-made toys, including Barbie doll accessories and toy cars because of concerns about lead paint and tiny magnets that could be swallowed.

The recalls have prompted complaints from China that manufacturers were being blamed for design faults introduced by Mattel.

On Friday, Debrowski acknowledged that “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.”

Lead-tainted toys accounted for only a small percentage of all toys recalled, he said, adding that: “We understand and appreciate deeply the issues that this has caused for the reputation of Chinese manufacturers.”

In a statement issued by the company, Mattel said its lead-related recalls were “overly inclusive, including toys that may not have had lead in paint in excess of the U.S. standards.

“The follow-up inspections also confirmed that part of the recalled toys complied with the U.S. standards,” the statement said.

Li reminded Debrowski that “a large part of your annual profit ... comes from your factories in China.

“This shows that our cooperation is in the interests of Mattel, and both parties should value our cooperation. I really hope that Mattel can learn lessons and gain experience from these incidents,” Li said, adding that Mattel should “improve their control measures.”

Since this summer’s recall, Mattel has announced plans to upgrade its safety system by certifying suppliers and increasing the frequency of random, unannounced inspections. It has fired several manufacturers.

Tests had found that lead levels in paint in recalled toys were as high as 110,000 parts per million, or nearly 200 times higher than the accepted safety ceiling of 600 parts per million.

Mattel’s shares fell from the mid-$23 level following the first recall in early August, reaching as low as $20.97 on Sept. 10. They have since rebounded to the mid-$23 level again.

China has become a center for the world’s toy-making industry, exporting $7.5 billion worth of toys last year.

Evil uncultured barbarians must apologize to China for their wicked ways. Blaming a country for their own incompetency in not QC their own goods.

Remember China is never wrong.

Mattel should be kicked out of China.

Americans should learn a lesson in "害人 終 害 已" when bashing China.

Americans laughed , jumped and celebrated bashing China but at the same time their American Company such as Mattel's stock price plummet.

China will going to kick every foreign companies out of China.

All those foreign companies that abuse Chinese workers and pollute Chinese land should be kicked out of the country

What a phoney staged event I read in this mornings paper. Beijing relies on the mushroom theory to keep people in line....keep them in the dark and feed them lots of bulls**t!! They don`t give a damn about their own people, so they sure as heck won`t care about the health and safety of non-Chinese.

Beijing not only knows that Chinese companies abuse workers and break health/safety regulations, but greedy party stooges are getting rich off of the bribes they accept from corrupt Chinese suppliers and their foreign counterparts. This will never change until the people of China get some accountability from their leaders and the one-party stranglehold on power ends.

Question, where is China's Quality Control?

You are putting the blame on Mattel for not designing the product correctly, but what about China's own fail/safe system? How did the design get past China's factories in the first place? Are chinese people nothing more then robots, just copying whatever is given to them? Have they no understand of what they are putting together?

In world class factories as in Germany and Japan. If the product is flawed from a design stand-point, the factory manager does not even put it out. That is one of the biggest flaws of doing business in china. China's factory is filled with uneducated peasants who's job is just to assemble A into B and not even think about if the product even works correctly.

What about Chinese company's that pollute the land and abuse their workers?

They built it to how Mattel wanted it. Hell, if they didn't want the toys to suck, don't design them to suck.


The fact that you guys blame the workers for it is ridiculous. How many of the workers know exactly what they're doing? They're given a template and a set of instructions and told to build a part. You wouldn't get pissed at the workers at Ford for building a $hitty pinto, because the manual laborers only contribute one small part out of the whole operation. If they could have spotted defects with their bare eye on the overall product, they wouldn't be doing gruelling physical labor.

so Mattel told them to use lead paint?

Read again.

It almost makes it sound like Mattel was forced to apologize.

Yep, so now Mattel is the victim again and China is the BIG EVIL ONE..
To you ppl its always China's fault.

Totally SUCKS that this isn't being televised or publicised.
The damage to China has been done and as long as this apology is hidden from mainstream news, everyone still sees China as the one at fault.

Pfft.

it was on CNBC

Good for you.

But I haven't heard about it here in Australia. Now, the story about Mattel recalling the toys in China - that was a story that got around.

China just follows instruction from their foreign boss to assembly toys. China does not question their boss on design flaws.
Design matter is for people who came up with the design to solve (Mattel toy designers).



What do you expect when foreign companies pay less than pennies to employees ? Pay the same wages to Chinese workers as you pay to German and Japanese workers and also provide same training to Chinese workers as you do to German and Japanese employees then you will have same quality products as Japan's and Germany's.



Every American TV Media and News papers joined the China bashing and spend so much air time smutting their China hate but when Mattel apologized hardly any American Media bothered to air the video clip.

Chinese.. what can we say about them when it comes to misinformation and outright lies? This is something moviez has failed to "overlook" somehow.



In other words, if Matel wanted to do business in China and not see their investment in China wiped out, they had to make this apology. In a word, it serves them right for putting all their eggs in one basket in a one cheap labor country.

It's smart moved by Mattel, they wants business with China, after all their business is owned by shareholders, and shareholders wants more profits, therefore Mattel will keep their OEM factories in China, otherwise Mattel will have less profit for their shareholders next year.

However, damage was done and will take long time to heal China's cheap & crappy product image.

Already many countries are taking harder quality checks on all Chinese made goods. But this wasn't surprise at all, it's time for China to develop new image, that's why China is concentrating on Olympic 2008, China wants world to see how China became successful and no more "cheap & crappy" image.

I hope this helped all Chinese companies to look towards brighter future.

Korean Nationalist such as Chucky3176 only cares about bashing China and not the truth :

So explain to me why you failed to post the rest of that article that you posted the link to. Why you conveniently took out that part of that article that you posted. Could it be that you wanted to give everyone a skewed vision of your Chinese Nationalist racist anti American, anti White mind?


Also read your own link:

"Skewed view" ? Bwhahaha... !!!! The topic of the article says "Toy recalls often due to bad design, review finds". And everything I quoted is from the site and not my own words so how could I be "skewing people's view" ?

If I wanted to provide a "skewed vision" then I would simply not post the link to the article.

It's more Mattel's fault, the Chinese quality control is at fault but not as much as Mattel. Who BOUGHT the lead paint to design their toys with? MATTEL! Who's responsibility is it to allow distribution and block of distribution of questionable toys? MATTEL! I think you're a robot to American capitalism, not blaming management who's job is TO LEAD while blaming the Chinese workers who's job is to only manufacture and put together, It is not the assembly line worker's responsiblity to come up with better ideas to make toys or point out flaws in the products. They do as they're told, if Mattel told them to add a certain paint to the toy, the workers will. The Chinese only grants the land to American companies to set up shop.

I think a lot of you still don't understand this issue in it's entirety.

This is the best thing to happen to China in the last 15 years. When historians look back on this event decades from now it will be cited as a instrumental step in forcing the Chinese manufacturing base to move away from an export oriented model to a self-production, self-consumption model that befits a nation of China's inherent status as one of the "Great Powers".

This, combined with the appreciation of the yuan will accelerate China's move to focus on the domestic market rather than the export market. Getting good to the Chinese is what China should be about. Getting depreciating American dollars in exchange for manufactured goods is not a viable long-term solution to China's economic problems.

The Chinese economy is coming into its own. And things like this only help speed up the process.

Chinese culture is notoriously cheap skate. China/Japan/korea are all basically the same model, without the US buying their exported goods, their economy goes into a tail spin. "Made In China" for the US and EU markets are poor in quality, but the "Made In China" for the domestic chinese market is even worst quality.

My biggest fear of the coming chinese economic collapse is immigration. China has such a huge population that will leave by the millions, go into countries that don't even want them (like Italy) and just stay there hoping that at least some will get in. The ones that won't get in will cry racism until they are let in.

I foresee another huge crisis in boat people going all over the world.

A great wishful thinking. How are you going to do that when your entire industry (65% to be exact), are foreign capital, foreign invested, and foreign technology? And with this kind of mentality,



it will be very difficult for the Chinese to do what you are saying.

lol, as opposed to your vigorously anti-Chinese anti-Black view of things?

Mattel chooses the Chinese company to produce the goods it wants. They also choose the specifications and since these goods are being imported into the US, its Mattel's job to insure that the Chinese company use better quality paint. Obviously, Mattel set a price standard of how low they want the cost of each toy unit, and the company squeezes its budget to produce the product at that manufacturing cost. Obviously the company wouldn't know about the US regulatory standard, so it's Mattel's-the US corporation- job to tell the manufacturer not to skimp on paint and to up the price of the product. Mattel probably didn't know that the paint was bad, but neither did the Chinese company know about the regulations. Obviously there's miscommunication on both parties.

LMAO. Somehow you expect poor peasant workers to identify minute flaws within the gestalt of the product when all they are given is a few parts out of the many. I'd like to see you, or even an "American" trained quality control engineer to do that. Besides, Mattel is accountable either way. The problem here isn't that China has some problems with its early manufacturing, it's that Mattel used that to shroud their own culpability. You should be questioning American management right now instead of dumping your load on China.

Wow. Haven't you heard of immigration quotas? It's not like some Chinamen are just going to sail around Cape Horn, past Gibraltar, and straight up into Venice. By golly you are one deluded person.

LOL. I hope so.

Boat ppl problem is everyone's problem now.

No, it was just a common mistake that happens in a manufacturing process. The CCP is not good but all these problems are not their fault.

But you're not going to give any other country a 2 paragraph diatrabe on how they need to implement Christian multiracialism to fix their problems whenever there's a minor recall.

Mattel issues fourth recall of Chinese-made toys

Graeme Wearden
Thursday October 25, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

For the fourth time in less than three months, Mattel is recalling toys because they pose a potential health threat.

The toymaker said this afternoon that it is recalling 55,500 Fisher-Price Go Diego Go Animal Rescue Boats worldwide because their paint includes an unacceptably high level of lead.

Some 12,000 units have been sold in the UK and Ireland, 38,000 in the US, and 5,500 in Canada since June this year.

They were manufactured in China, as were millions of other Mattel toys already recalled this summer.

Mattel said in a statement that it had contracted one Chinese factory to handle the molding and painting of one part of the toys. This factory then subcontracted the painting to a second company which used "unauthorized paint". Mattel added that the toys were made before it brought in a new testing system.

Chinese factories have been blamed for all of Mattel's product recalls this summer, which have embarrassed the company and weighed on its profits.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2140183,00.html

The first recall, at the start of August, involved 1.5m items that had been painted with paint containing too much lead. Lead paint has been linked to a number of health scares, including brain damage, in children.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2148595,00.html

Two weeks later, the company revealed that another 18m toys posed a danger to childen. In most cases, the problem was that the products contained small magnets that could fall out. If swallowed, the magnets could attract each other and cause intestinal perforation or blockage, which could be fatal.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2162715,00.html

In September, Mattel issued a third recall of another 850,000 toys, again because of lead paint problems.

The problems have led to fears that there could be a toy shortage this Christmas, but Mattel insisted today that it was still on track.

"There may be some shortages of toys that are particularly popular, but that is not because of the recent issues," the company spokeswoman said.

Earlier this month, Mattel blamed the toy recalls for a drop in profits.

www.service.mattel.com/uk

Consumers can check if their toys are included in the recall by visiting Mattel's web site.

^ may be Mattel needs to cease operation in China, and makes toys in USA.

China said the appologizing is not enough. A law suite is in the process against Mattel.

香港文汇报珠三角新闻中心记者陈悦、唐苗苗广州26日电／玩具召回风波致使中方生产商悬梁自尽的惨剧仍历历在目，对此事抱憾及不忿的则大有人在。此间内地报道称，北京雷曼律师事务所律师郝俊波已著手联系相关玩具企业，准备赴美提起跨国诉讼，形容“美泰的疏忽过错给中国企业已经造成了很大损失，仅道歉是不够的”，首次态度强硬地向美方说出一个“不”字.

　据报道，正准备为中国玩具企业起诉美泰的郝俊波称，这个诉讼除了为中国玩具企业维权外，还希望能为中国产品正名。由于在中国起诉，即使胜诉也无法执行，所以必须到美国去起诉。因此，郝俊波已从两方面著手准备工作：“中国方面，我们希望中国受害企业能尽快和我们取得联系，我们不需要中国企业负担任何诉讼费用；美国方面，我们将和美国律师进一步研究法律技术问题。11月2日在美国纽约的哥伦比亚法学院有个法律论坛召开，我们将派律师参加，将案例提交世界各国的专家和美国律师进行谈论”。

让国际重新审视中国产品

　据郝俊波称，“其实我们一开始是打算为自杀的张树鸿打死亡赔偿官司，但没联系上他的家属。而详细的起诉方案，要待玩具商联系和那个论坛之后会确定”，“据我们所知，美泰好像也已找了中国的律师以备未来的诉讼”。

　郝俊波表示，一些国外媒体如此轻率作出“中国产品有问题”论断，让不少外国人对中国产品有成见，这也是我们为什么必须要通过诉讼来让全世界重新审视中国产品。

　此外，本报记者也从中国国际经济贸易仲裁委员会了解到，该会认为该案还可寻找贸易仲裁来协调矛盾，不至于落至自杀收场，完全可有理有节去对别人说“不”。

These recalls are likely a profit making venture for Mattel. So many governments would pay to see China's trade surplus ruined.

China's national image has been completely wrecked for the time being. 'made in China' just got a whole lot worse.