You can never be too street-smart in China, even for a native like me, because there are tricks and catches everywhere in the booming economy. You can easily find counterfeits of not only the Western brand names, but also virtually everything, such as Chinese brand beer, shampoo and even milk. Can't believe it about the milk knockoff? Check out this Chinese-language news report.

My American coworkers asked why unethical business practices are so rampant and what counterfeiters thrive on. My answer was a tip told by a Chinese friend: "It's OK to burn your customers and not expect them to come back, because if you burn every Chinese person [of the 1.3 billion] once, you'll make a fortune already."

That's sort of true. But more fundamentally, it's because China doesn't have a credit monitoring system for individuals or record keeping agency for foul businesses. No Better Business Bureaus. Consumers are in the dark. Therefore, even if the bad businesses, mostly very small in scale, get exposed by the press, the owners often disappear overnight and start a new shop the next day.

But, all this could be changing, gradually. Thanks to the wave of recalls of Chinese-made products in the West, the Chinese government, worried about the export-led gross domestic product, started right away pushing for mechanisms that track product information. An unprecedented "Product Quality Credit Scores" database was launched January 15, 2008, by China's Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine. "Focus on product quality and credit, establish good faith," it says on the Web site. Anyone can use the online system to search the records for a company name or product name as well as browse relevant laws, standards and announcements. The system has six channels, 17 sub-databases, and 430,000 records. It also keeps track of all recalls of made-in-China products by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Although not comprehensive yet, the database looks to me like a good starting point. In the "bad records"(straight translation) section, I did a search for plastic product and found 11 records out of the total pool of 831.

Considering maybe one of the English-language readers of this blog entry is sourcing from China, I think it might help to translate these 11 records, generated based on testings in 2007, for your reference. Here they are, with manufacturers' names, product names, and specific defects.

1. Anshan City Qianning District Ningyuan Township Xinbao Village PS Board Factory, polystyrene foam for thermal insulation uses, surface density.
2. Baoding Windmill Balloon Electric Co Ltd. Huaxin Branch, plastic film/bag for packaging food seasonings, residue of benzene-base solvent.
3. Beijing Meilan Power Switch Factory, circuit breaker with plastic casing, breaking capacity.
4. Foshan Fozhou Electrical Switch Co. Ltd., circuit breaker with plastic casing, breaking capacity.
5. Fujian KaiDa Printing Co. Ltd., multilayer plastic film, residue of benzene-base solvent.
6. Jiashan Ren He Insulation Material Co. Ltd., polystyrene foam for thermal insulation uses, combustibility.
7. Jiang Yi Electrical Group Co. Ltd., circuit breaker with plastic casing, breaking capacity.
8. Shenyang Dongling District PengXin PS Board Factory, polystyrene foam for thermal insulation uses, combustibility.
9. Wenzhou Southern Flexible Packaging Co. Ltd., multiplayer plastic film for food packaging, residue of benzene-base solvent.
10. Xiong County Huayue Color Printing Co. Ltd., multiplayer plastic film for food packaging, residue of benzene-base solvent.
11. Zhejiang Taihua Electrical Co. Ltd., circuit breaker with plastic casing, releasing and breaking capacity.