China Establishes Consumer Product Recall Procedures

On June 16, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) published the draft Management Measures for Consumer Product Recall (Draft for Opinions) for public opinions, with a deadline of July 15. According to the AQSIQ announcement, the drafting work, led by the AQSIQ Enforcement Supervision Department since March 2014, was to provide legal basis for China's consumer product recall regulation, strengthen enforcement on counterfeit and shoddy products, and protect consumers' rights.

This draft included 5 key aspects:

• Brand owners are directly responsible for defective product recall; compliance of foreign companies and imported products that are sold in the China market is equally required as domestic companies and products.
• Catalogue management regime will be established to set product scope, which includes electronic and electric products.
• AQSIQ Defective Product Recall Promotion Group, together with public security administrations and industry and commerce administrations, will set up an information sharing system for mandatory standards, compulsory certification, quality examination, counterfeit enforcement, risk assessment, product guarantees, organization registration code, etc.
• AQSIQ and its provincial agencies are respectively responsible for cross-region and local defect investigation.
• National and provincial laboratories for defective products engineering analysis will be established for technical support of consumer product recall.