[Red Fox Ace]

This is an issue of concern. If the PRC government is abetting this, it would erode trust and confidence between both sides of the Strait.


Chinese goods flooding to Taiwan under local labels


http://www.taipeitim...7/26/2003478839

By Vincent Y. Chao
STAFF REPORTER
Monday, Jul 26, 2010, Page 1

Chinese imports paraded as ?Made in Taiwan? are rampant throughout Taiwanese marketplaces, retail stores and high-end department stores, industry representatives said.

As of Saturday, a total of 26,894 items that were either falsely labeled or not labeled at all had been seized by law enforcement agents nationwide, the Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection said yesterday. The products ranged from clothes, towels and bedding to shoes, socks and bags, it said.

The lucrative trade ? Made in Taiwan (MIT) products often sell for higher prices than ?Chinese-made merchandise ? is seldom policed, it is hard to spot fake MIT products and business appears to be booming.

WORRIES

It has compounded worries in Taiwanese traditional industries that the MIT brand, which has taken years and billions of dollars to build, could become associated with ?Made in China,? decreasing the value of local products.

?MIT products everywhere are feeling the impact,? said Huang Kuang-yi (黃光藝), head of the Taiwan Bedding Industry Alliance, which represents more than 140 industry professionals.

?The government promises that it will step up its monitoring, but nothing ever happens,? Huang said.

Statistics complied by his organization through spot checks and consumer reports are shocking: Up to 30 percent of all MIT bedding supplies sold in department stores could in fact be made hundreds of kilometers away in Chinese factories.

SHODDY WORK

Most false labeling is done by removing the ?Made in China? mark and then sewing on or attaching new ?Made in Taiwan? tags. The work is often crudely done, with either the older tag left on or words on the new tag spelled incorrectly, Huang said. Others, however, are highly sophisticated.

A recent occurrence was the introduction of ?multi-country tags,? a label that includes a checkbox beside the names of multiple countries that importers can pick and choose at their discretion.

There are apparently huge financial payoffs for the ?multi-country tags.?

Huang said a Chinese bedding product that normally sells for NT$1,000 could easily sell for five or six times that price if it is labeled as made in Taiwan, and between 10 and 20 times if it is listed as from Italy.

He blamed the flood of mis-?labeled products on the government?s lax regulations, adding that it has failed to crack down on the illicit trade. Based on his understanding, less than one in 350 bedding products imported from China are subject to spot checks.

However, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Huang-lang (蔡煌瑯) said the information was hardly surprising given the government?s continued market liberalization with China and the country?s deepening economic reliance on its neighbor over the last two years.

?It?s hard to expect relevant authorities to crack down when the entire [President] Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration is intent on opening Taiwan up to China,? Tsai said.

He said government regulations over country-of-origin labels ?were a mess? and that it was almost common practice for Chinese imports to be labeled from Taiwan or other countries.

The bureau acknowledged that it faces difficulties in policing Chinese imports, but said that it was holding educational campaigns for consumers and retailers, while stepping up spot checks.

Difficulties include a lack of compliance by retailers for investigators to check and test their products for potential mislabeling, the bureau said.

Tsai said the government should impose more stringent checks on all Chinese imports and increase persecution of those found mislabeling or selling fake goods. To do otherwise would place Taiwanese manufacturers at a huge disadvantage, he said.

However, Huang also said things will continue to get worse before they become better because passage of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China will dramatically increase the amount of goods, legal and otherwise, coming across the Taiwan Strait.

?Every day we wait for the government to handle and stop this practice, but so far nothing has come of it,? he said. ?The government just doesn?t care about traditional Taiwanese industries.?

[Sampanviking]

Assuming it is true of course.

The question first is how widespread is this story and to what degree have the relevant authorities raised their concerns?

Otherwise you simply have an anti Chinese scare story in a pro DPP Paper against an agreement that they know could end up burying them as an effective political force and from a party with a proven record of dirty tricks.

[IchiNiSan]

Isn't this the responsibility of greedy Taiwanese importers? This is at most a provincial issue, like another story about some unethical Hong Kong tourist guides.

[wdl76]

Red Fox Ace, on Jul 27 2010, 09:59 AM, said:

This is an issue of concern. If the PRC government is abetting this, it would erode trust and confidence between both sides of the Strait.


Chinese goods flooding to Taiwan under local labels


http://www.taipeitim...7/26/2003478839

By Vincent Y. Chao
STAFF REPORTER
Monday, Jul 26, 2010, Page 1

Chinese imports paraded as ?Made in Taiwan? are rampant throughout Taiwanese marketplaces, retail stores and high-end department stores, industry representatives said.

As of Saturday, a total of 26,894 items that were either falsely labeled or not labeled at all had been seized by law enforcement agents nationwide, the Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection said yesterday. The products ranged from clothes, towels and bedding to shoes, socks and bags, it said.

The lucrative trade ? Made in Taiwan (MIT) products often sell for higher prices than ?Chinese-made merchandise ? is seldom policed, it is hard to spot fake MIT products and business appears to be booming.

WORRIES

It has compounded worries in Taiwanese traditional industries that the MIT brand, which has taken years and billions of dollars to build, could become associated with ?Made in China,? decreasing the value of local products.

?MIT products everywhere are feeling the impact,? said Huang Kuang-yi (黃光藝), head of the Taiwan Bedding Industry Alliance, which represents more than 140 industry professionals.

?The government promises that it will step up its monitoring, but nothing ever happens,? Huang said.

Statistics complied by his organization through spot checks and consumer reports are shocking: Up to 30 percent of all MIT bedding supplies sold in department stores could in fact be made hundreds of kilometers away in Chinese factories.

SHODDY WORK

Most false labeling is done by removing the ?Made in China? mark and then sewing on or attaching new ?Made in Taiwan? tags. The work is often crudely done, with either the older tag left on or words on the new tag spelled incorrectly, Huang said. Others, however, are highly sophisticated.

A recent occurrence was the introduction of ?multi-country tags,? a label that includes a checkbox beside the names of multiple countries that importers can pick and choose at their discretion.

There are apparently huge financial payoffs for the ?multi-country tags.?

Huang said a Chinese bedding product that normally sells for NT$1,000 could easily sell for five or six times that price if it is labeled as made in Taiwan, and between 10 and 20 times if it is listed as from Italy.

He blamed the flood of mis-?labeled products on the government?s lax regulations, adding that it has failed to crack down on the illicit trade. Based on his understanding, less than one in 350 bedding products imported from China are subject to spot checks.

However, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Huang-lang (蔡煌瑯) said the information was hardly surprising given the government?s continued market liberalization with China and the country?s deepening economic reliance on its neighbor over the last two years.

?It?s hard to expect relevant authorities to crack down when the entire [President] Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) administration is intent on opening Taiwan up to China,? Tsai said.

He said government regulations over country-of-origin labels ?were a mess? and that it was almost common practice for Chinese imports to be labeled from Taiwan or other countries.

The bureau acknowledged that it faces difficulties in policing Chinese imports, but said that it was holding educational campaigns for consumers and retailers, while stepping up spot checks.

Difficulties include a lack of compliance by retailers for investigators to check and test their products for potential mislabeling, the bureau said.

Tsai said the government should impose more stringent checks on all Chinese imports and increase persecution of those found mislabeling or selling fake goods. To do otherwise would place Taiwanese manufacturers at a huge disadvantage, he said.

However, Huang also said things will continue to get worse before they become better because passage of the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA) with China will dramatically increase the amount of goods, legal and otherwise, coming across the Taiwan Strait.

?Every day we wait for the government to handle and stop this practice, but so far nothing has come of it,? he said. ?The government just doesn?t care about traditional Taiwanese industries.?

From my point of view, aside from the failure of Taiwanese customs in checking imported goods going into their country.

It just shows how irelevant the "made in" label nowadays in the globalised age, where goods and services moves across borders in a very fluid manner.
Comes to think of it, there are only 2 labels that should dominate the world supplies of goods

1. Made in China
2. Made by Chinese

I used to work in an industrial area and it amazes me when I see the factory workers come to work, they are predominantly Chinese people imported for their well renown hard work, easy to control and lower wages.

Finally what "Made in Taiwan" reputation?

[Sampanviking]

Labelling is the problem in so many things.

You wonder if products made by on the mainland by Taiwanese companies are being labelled at Made in Taiwan. Its not difficult to understand why they would wish to do this, with protectionist measures in both the EU and US targeting Chinese made goods, but presumably not applied to Taiwanese.

[hwalong]

I personally would like to see China to jump off the bootleg boat and start making a better image for herself

Catch ups and short cuts are nice. Letting this grow into an industrial culture and unprobihited practice will be bad for the long run

But i guess at the end of the day, this is just another bitching about China from your typical daily taipei news tabloid
I bet this practice has been going for years before they pull in this article

[Red Fox Ace]

wdl76, on Jul 28 2010, 08:35 PM, said:

Finally what "Made in Taiwan" reputation?

Quote

Huang said a Chinese bedding product that normally sells for NT$1,000 could easily sell for five or six times that price if it is labeled as made in Taiwan

[wdl76]

I will choose Lenovo over Acer anytime of the day.
You may say that Taiwanese brand hardware are pretty famous in the world but I choose it only as the last resort, there were too much problems with drivers, compatibility and s**t like those

As of bedding ?????? Don't know mate, don't really go around looking for bedding products for much.

My personal view on Taiwans product, they haven't been around for long anyway comes to think of it the sequences of major Asian manufacturer that I can remember

1. Made in Japan 70-80s
2. Made in Hongkong 80s-90s
3. Made in Korea 90s-now
4. Made in Chine 00s-now

Taiwan never had a big share of manufacturing anywhere anyway,


But Fox, next time I go around for a piece of linen, I will make sure to check where it was made and try to compare with made in China.

Probably Taiwanese cotton are different to Chinese

Anyway FYI, for instance a famouse bedding product in Au is Sheridan, they are either made in China or Australia never seen them made in Taiwan.


But hell what do I know

[IchiNiSan]

wdl76, on Jul 30 2010, 08:02 AM, said:

I will choose Lenovo over Acer anytime of the day.
You may say that Taiwanese brand hardware are pretty famous in the world but I choose it only as the last resort, there were too much problems with drivers, compatibility and s**t like those

As of bedding ?????? Don't know mate, don't really go around looking for bedding products for much.

My personal view on Taiwans product, they haven't been around for long anyway comes to think of it the sequences of major Asian manufacturer that I can remember

1. Made in Japan 70-80s
2. Made in Hongkong 80s-90s
3. Made in Korea 90s-now
4. Made in Chine 00s-now

Taiwan never had a big share of manufacturing anywhere anyway,


But Fox, next time I go around for a piece of linen, I will make sure to check where it was made and try to compare with made in China.

Probably Taiwanese cotton are different to Chinese

Anyway FYI, for instance a famouse bedding product in Au is Sheridan, they are either made in China or Australia never seen them made in Taiwan.


But hell what do I know

Actually, we should be as proud for Taiwanese products, as for Guangdong or Zhejiang manufactured products. And Taiwan should focus on the development to become the China's silicon valley. Actually most of the electronic value adding services, like IC masking, programming etc etc are actually coming from Taiwan.

Only this road and tourism will make the Taiwanese economy flourish again.

Of course, as Taiwanese are a bit stubborn of recognizing that they should inevitably reunify with the mainland, so Beijing should diversify and create another Silicon Valley elsewhere on the mainland, there is plenty of room for China to have more silicon valleys. Hainan would be attractive enough for those brainees to show off their creativity.