Chinese demand tougher policing of shoddy goods

BEIJING -- Chinese, long plagued by rampant production and distribution of bogus goods, on Thursday voiced hopes that such illegalities can be truly controlled with intensified inspection efforts.

Their calls come on the eve of International Consumer Rights Day, an occasion that has made media headlines around the country.

On China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo service, a discussion organized to share experiences of being cheated or treated unfairly in commerce generated more than 60,000 comments within three days.

The national broadcaster CCTV, which is set to reveal a list of cases concerning fake and inferior goods as well as scams facing consumers in an annual program scheduled for Friday, also invited Internet users to provide information.

In scenes that China has long grown accustomed to on a periodic basis, recent days have also seen a concentration of inspection visits to markets and factories and burning of fake or inferior goods by officials.

True, the tightened oversight ahead of Consumer Rights Day is useful and even dramatic. But the public want more to be done.

"Targeting these illegalities on just one day won't really help, and instead we should focus on product and service quality as well as consumer rights protection year round," read one Weibo entry.

Another Internet user wrote, "Government agencies should beef up their inspection and control efforts, and guilty producers and traders should be severely punished for breaking the law."