China trade reputation rests on safety, says EU

BEIJING, Nov 26 (Reuters) - China's long-term trade prospects depend on defusing international worries about dangerous and faulty exports, the top EU trade official said on Monday, while stressing the problem was not China's alone.

Recalls, mostly by U.S. companies such as Mattel Inc, have stoked worries about buying cheap Chinese exports, which now account for about three quarters of the world's toys.

Mattel has recalled over 21 million Chinese-made products in the last four months.

European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson told a meeting on food safety in Beijing that a rash of recalls of toys, toothpaste and other consumer goods had shaken global confidence in China's exports.

Beijing had to clamp down on defective goods to retore buyers' confidence.

"While product safety is not a problem restricted to China, it will nevertheless be central to the global perception of China's growing weight as a manufacturer," he said, according to a text of his remarks issued by the European Union.

"China's long-term success depends on its reputation."

Foreign worries about Chinese-made goods have added to the country's woes about trade friction and its ballooning surplus with the European Union, which has been pressing for more open access to Chinese markets.

But Mandelson, who will also attend a China-EU leaders' summit in Beijing, also stressed that responsibility for the stream of product problems lay not only with Beijing.

"It is not a made-in-China problem. It is not a Mattel problem," he said, adding that "final responsibility rests with diligent businesses and with public authorities on both sides".

But the EU trade chief also tied worries about safety to wealthy nations' other big bugbear with "made-in-China" -- what he called the "tidal wave" of counterfeits from that country.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the trade in counterfeited consumer goods has reached $200 billion a year, equivalent to 2 percent of world trade, with many fakes coming from China.

"Some of those products -- fake medicines, fake car parts, fake aircraft parts -- carry huge risks," Mandelson said, demanding a "clearer demonstration" that Beijing was working to stamp out counterfeiters. (Reporting by Chris Buckley, editing by Nick Macfie)