The Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) urged the public yesterday to report shoddy products from China, saying it wanted to protect local consumers and traditional industries.
The call comes amid mounting international concern over the safety of Chinese exports, the main engine of China's breakneck economic growth.
In recent weeks Chinese goods ranging from toothpaste to seafood have been banned or recalled around the world because of toxins or non-approved additives.
TSU spokeswoman Chou Mei-li (周美里) said the main purpose of the campaign was to call public attention to the threat from Chinese exports. She also criticized the government for not doing enough to protect the public and local industries from their impact.
"Taiwan's traditional industries are facing a survival battle because of cheap Chinese products," she said. "Now the whole world is ... concerned with [the safety] of Chinese products, and Taiwan is the first to feel the impact as we have a lot of Chinese imports."
A key feature of the campaign, Chou said, was to get Taiwanese to write essays about substandard Chinese goods.
"We hope to raise Taiwanese consumers' awareness of product safety and provide them with a platform to exchange information," she said.
Once banned in Taiwan, Chinese products ranging from electronic goods to children's toys are now ubiquitous, winning widespread customer approval, largely because of their relatively low prices.
But they have also come under scathing attack from the TSU and the Democratic Progressive Party.
Both parties say that Chinese imports undercut the profitability of low-tech Taiwanese industries, such as textile manufacturing, causing factory closures and threatening job security in Taiwan..
The TSU campaign comes a week after the Cabinet added a special China products section to its Web site devoted to unsafe imports. Among the Chinese goods listed on the site are toys with excessive amounts of lead and food products containing banned chemicals.
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