Plastics News managing editor Don Loepp pointed out the attention the Western media gave Chinese product-quality issues last year in a recent post, as a few U.S. news reports on the subject have become strong candidates for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize awards for journalists.

"China is a land of toxins and danger. Our homes may be full of made-in-China products, but we look at them suspiciously," Loepp wrote, summarizing the prevailing perception of China in the United States.

He also rightly pointed out that a Pulitzer may trigger Washington to take a closer look at Chinese manufacturing and product quality.

The same issues also have been recognized in China with the country's Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ) listing the Mattel recalls as one of the "Ten Most Influential Events of 2007."

Besides pressure from its overseas buyers, Chinese manufacturers now face enraged domestic consumers who've read about Western countries' reactions to unsafe products and realized that their own domestic goods are much worse but nobody is there to safeguard them!

AQSIQ and other authorities have, since June, fast-tracked a few projects targeting better product information transparency and stricter quality control. The newly launched online database "Product Quality Credit Records" is empowering the average Chinese consumer in an unprecedented measure.

The same agents are also building a "China Import and Export Products Inspection and Quarantine Information Bank." The Chinese version is expected to go live online March 15 and the English version on June 15.

With such a system, Chinese users will be able to have one more reference before they make a purchase. Profit-driven manufacturers will no longer be able to pass off their recalled products onto domestic consumers.

All of this, without the recalls in the West, wouldn't have had a chance to be accomplished any time soon.

So, in a sense, Chinese consumers owe Americans, the biggest importer, a thank-you. Thanks very much for heightening China's awareness of consumer rights and helping clean up the marketplace, whether it was intended or not.