The Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection (BSMI) yesterday said that in the past week it seized more than 1,700 pieces of clothing, home furnishings, towels and footwear labeled “made in Taiwan” that were actually manufactured in China and elsewhere.
The bureau said over the past few days it had been conducting raids on clothing stores and roadside stalls in popular shopping areas in Taipei, Kaohsiung, Chiayi and other parts of the country. The 1,759 incorrectly labeled garments discovered during the raids are part of 14,000 examples of mislabeled, unlabeled or otherwise substandard imported textile products seized by authorities to date, the bureau said.
By labeling Chinese-made products with tags indicating that the garment was made in Taiwan, manufacturers and shops hope to trick consumers willing to pay more for locally-made products
The seized products included undergarments, aprons, T-shirts, coats, dresses, bedding, socks, towels and slippers.
Aside from raiding retail outlets, authorities also discovered a factory in Kaohsiung City that specialized in cutting off the original clothing labels and replacing them with tags bearing false information, deputy director-general Huang Lai-ho (黃來和) said.
As it is alleged that the factory attempted to defraud consumers, in violation of the Criminal Code (刑法), local authorities have opened an investigation, Huang said, adding that the owner may face a prison sentence of up to one year if found guilty.
The bureau said that it has gathered hundreds of leads on manufacturers and retailers across the country suspected of similar attempts to trick consumers, and said that it plans to continue to conduct raids and issue warnings.
Businesses that fail to take questionable products off their shelves and make improvements within the deadline given by the bureau would have their names and addresses publicized on the bureau’s official Web site, as well as face fines of between NT$20,000 and NT$200,000, Huang said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods