Clothes from leading international fashion have been declared substandard in China with some containing large levels of a chemical that can cause respiratory and eye irritations, Chinese authorities said.
Quality control tests were conducted on garments from 40 labels for sale in Shanghai, including luxury brands Armani, Burberry, Polo Ralph Lauren, ST Dupont and MaxMara, China's bureau of commerce and industry said.
Of the 59 garments and shoes tested, 25 were declared substandard with some having high levels of formaldehyde, unacceptable amounts of acid (pH) and poor dyes, the bureau said in a notice on its Web site on Friday.
All but one of the 25 garments were imported.
Formaldehyde can cause skin rashes, eye irritations, provoke allergies and cause respiratory problems and cancer, in extremely high levels, the notice said.
One garment contained twice the amount allowed under regulations, it said.
The results will spark concern among retailers and shoppers in China, the world's third-largest consumer of luxury goods after Japan and the US.
About 250 million Chinese are expected to be able to afford luxury goods by 2010, leading French pollster the IPSOS Institute has predicted.
Other problems include erroneous labelling, with one garment saying it was 20 percent cashmere, but tests showed it contained just 1.7 percent.
The bureau said the clothes, which range in price from a few hundred yuan to 40,000 yuan (more than US$5,000), would be withdrawn and penalties imposed on the manufacturers.
Napoleon Osorio is proud of being the first taxi driver to have accepted payment in bitcoin in the first country in the world to make the cryptocurrency legal tender: El Salvador. He credits Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s decision to bank on bitcoin three years ago with changing his life. “Before I was unemployed... And now I have my own business,” said the 39-year-old businessman, who uses an app to charge for rides in bitcoin and now runs his own car rental company. Three years ago the leader of the Central American nation took a huge gamble when he put bitcoin
TECH RACE: The Chinese firm showed off its new Mate XT hours after the latest iPhone launch, but its price tag and limited supply could be drawbacks China’s Huawei Technologies Co (華為) yesterday unveiled the world’s first tri-foldable phone, as it seeks to expand its lead in the world’s biggest smartphone market and steal the spotlight from Apple Inc hours after it debuted a new iPhone. The Chinese tech giant showed off its new Mate XT, which users can fold three ways like an accordion screen door, during a launch ceremony in Shenzhen. The Mate XT comes in red and black and has a 10.2-inch display screen. At 3.6mm thick, it is the world’s slimmest foldable smartphone, Huawei said. The company’s Web site showed that it has garnered more than
Vanguard International Semiconductor Corp (世界先進) and Episil Technologies Inc (漢磊) yesterday announced plans to jointly build an 8-inch fab to produce silicon carbide (SiC) chips through an equity acquisition deal. SiC chips offer higher efficiency and lower energy loss than pure silicon chips, and they are able to operate at higher temperatures. They have become crucial to the development of electric vehicles, artificial intelligence data centers, green energy storage and industrial devices. Vanguard, a contract chipmaker focused on making power management chips and driver ICs for displays, is to acquire a 13 percent stake in Episil for NT$2.48 billion (US$77.1 million).
CROSS-STRAIT TENSIONS: The US company could switch orders from TSMC to alternative suppliers, but that would lower chip quality, CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), whose products have become the hottest commodity in the technology world, on Wednesday said that the scramble for a limited amount of supply has frustrated some customers and raised tensions. “The demand on it is so great, and everyone wants to be first and everyone wants to be most,” he told the audience at a Goldman Sachs Group Inc technology conference in San Francisco. “We probably have more emotional customers today. Deservedly so. It’s tense. We’re trying to do the best we can.” Huang’s company is experiencing strong demand for its latest generation of chips, called
RSS