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Wang Qishan on Sino-Japan food safety

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-06-06 00:11

BEIJING -- China and Japan should promote healthy economic and trade relations by working together more closely to ensure product quality and food safety, according to Chinese Vice Premier Wang Qishan.

The full text of an article that Wang contributed to The Nikkei follows:

It is an inevitable demand from the people, and a responsibility of all governments, that product quality is improved and food safety ensured as the development of the global economy and societal progress steadily improve living standards.

The Chinese government attaches great importance to ensuring that quality goods and safe food products are delivered to the market, because such measures are necessary to guarantee the steady growth of the domestic economy, as well as to protect the lives and health of the 1.3 billion Chinese people. They are also essential if a major trading nation like China is to earn the trust of the global market.

Beijing has already enacted 34 related laws and regulations, setting more than 20,000 national standards. This oversight covers all aspects of the national economy -- from production and transport, to retail and exports and imports. The government is making steady efforts to upgrade the departments and personnel charged with overseeing the hygiene and quality standards of industrial and agricultural products.

Related government frameworks, including legislation, product quality standards, testing and oversight, are being bolstered by the day. China's system for ensuring that the quality of its exports meet internationally mandated standards has indeed been put in place, though it may require further improvement in the future.

The quality of Chinese industrial goods and the safety of Chinese food products have notably improved in step with rapid economic growth and social progress, meeting the ever-rising demand from domestic and overseas markets and thus winning recognition from a wide range of consumers both at home and abroad.

But China is still a developing country in the process of industrializing. There is a significant disparity in the pace of economic development between urban and rural areas, limiting the growth of the domestic market.

Technology and quality control levels are also uneven across Chinese companies, because a multitude of small businesses are operating all over the nation. As such, a small number of firms still must fully recognize the need and responsibility to make and ship safe, high-quality products.

I might also add that China still lags behind advanced countries in such areas as drafting new product-safety standards and revising existing ones quickly; ensuring cooperation among government agencies that oversee different industrial sectors; and adequately training government inspectors and devising cutting-edge inspection methods. We will need to work steadily for some time to solve these problems.

China and Japan are important trading partners. Generally speaking, industrial and food products traded between China and Japan are of high quality and safety standards. More than 99% of Chinese and Japanese food exports bound for each other in 2007 passed each country's safety tests when their samples were subjected to such testing, according to Japan's Ministry of Health and China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

As bilateral economic ties steadily expand, some products exported by Japan and China to each other have recently raised quality and safety concerns. But those items are only a minuscule portion of an ever-growing list of goods exported to each other, and in no way represent the product-quality and food-safety standards of both countries' products.

The bilateral relationship has entered a new stage of development under the guidance of top Chinese and Japanese leaders who are pushing to deepen ties in such a way as to strategically benefit both nations.

It is of great practical significance that possible cooperation on ensuring product quality and food safety has been put high on the agenda for the Second China-Japan High-Level Economic Dialogue, which will be held shortly. Both countries should consider cooperating fully in this area from a long-term perspective, through this and other dialogues.

Participants in the upcoming meeting will likely discuss ways to promote various personnel exchanges and to jointly devise effective quality control systems. The Japanese government has extensive experience overseeing quality control and food safety practices at firms in general, and at midsize and small ones in particular. Our government will be able to learn much from its counterpart in this respect.

Beijing will seek to bolster its ability to ensure Chinese product quality and food safety by improving the existing mechanism to notify trading partners of potential problems quickly. This will allow the government to upgrade its ability to swiftly respond to possible problems and solve them in a timely and satisfactory fashion.

Beijing calls on Tokyo to bolster bilateral cooperation in ensuring product safety, with an emphasis on such industrial categories as machinery, electronics, textiles, chemicals and farm produce. Such cooperation would include promoting exchanges of personnel charged with drafting relevant legislation, with setting required standards and with devising certification programs. Furthermore, Chinese and Japanese authorities involved in cracking down on counterfeit and shoddily made goods should strengthen current cooperation.

It is a never-ending process to improve product quality and food safety in line with scientific advances and technological innovation. I hope that both governments will step up bilateral cooperation in a forthright and businesslike manner, creating an environment conducive to steady growth in mutually beneficial economic and trade ties -- thus bringing further happiness to their citizens.