China has become the world’s second-largest importer of luxury goods, but not all of these products met required standards. Shanghai Inspection and Quarantine Bureau had conducted spot inspection for 10,000 batches of apparel and imitation accessories imports, and found that nearly 30% of the products did not qualify.

Since last year, apparel imports, imitation accessories and other luxury goods were added into the Statutory Inspection Import Catalog. Statistics from the Shanghai Inspection and Quarantine Bureau showed that Shanghai port had conducted statutory inspection and quarantine for 25,000 batches of imported apparel and imitation accessories, most of them were mid-high level brands, and the total amount of which was estimated at US$560 million.

At a time when the import of mid-market and high-end consumer goods is increasing, the quality of luxury goods imports has drawn concern from the consumer public. This announcement follows the February 2011 news that Shanghai Inspection and Quarantine Bureau found 33 batches of unqualified imitation accessories among 56 batches of products, making the ratio of unqualified goods to approved goods 58.93%. The arsenium content of some accessories exceeded the approved national level by two or three times, and the lead content was also very high. In addition, another test report of apparel imports showed that the unqualified ratio has reached 55.8%, the main reasons for failure were adulteration, colorfastness failure, pH value and formaldehyde content exceeding legal limits.

Shanghai Inspection and Quarantine Bureau totally conducted spot inspection of apparel and simulation accessories imports for over 10,000 batches in the past whole year, and found nearly 30% of these products did not qualify, there were about 1100 batches of unqualified products involving the safety, healthy and environmental protection project, including nearly 700 batches of apparel imports and more than 400 batches of imitation accessories.
(Source: http://finance.china.com.cn/consume/xfjs/20120131/504118.shtml).

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