CHINA / Regional |
China says tires in US recall meet safety standards(AP)Updated: 2007-07-18 13:42 BEIJING -- Government inspectors in China have concluded that tires made by a Chinese company that is the subject of a huge US recall meet official American safety standards, news reports said Wednesday. Officials issued the decision after inspecting the Hangzhou Zhongce Rubber Co. and testing three tires at a government laboratory, newspapers reported. "Our sample tests on the tires show they're qualified to be sold in the US," said Wang Xin, an official of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, quoted by newspapers. US authorities ordered a recall of up to 450,000 tires made by Hangzhou Zhongce after its American distributor said they lacked a key component. Beijing has launched a sweeping effort to repair the reputation of its export industries, promising more aggressive safety enforcement. The Hangzhou Zhongce case has received prominent coverage by Chinese media because the company is the country's second-biggest tire manufacturer. Many companies involved in other recalls are small and less well-known. Tires tested by the AQSIQ were found to meet US standards, known as Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 119, or FMVSS 119, according to the Oriental Morning Post. People who answered the phone Wednesday at Hangzhou Zhongce, in the eastern city of Hangzhou, and AQSIQ in Beijing referred questions to spokespeople who were not immediately available. The tire recall was ordered after the US distributor, Foreign Tire Sales Inc. of Union, New Jersey, said they lacked a safety feature, called a gum strip, that binds together belts of a tire. The company said some tires had a gum strip that was about half the width of the 0.6 millimeter strip that FTS expected. FTS was sued May 4 by the families of two men who were killed when a van in which they were riding crashed in Pennsylvania on August 12, 2006. The lawsuit says the van had Hangzhou Zhongce tires. Hangzhou Zhongce has denied supplying faulty products. In comments published in the China Daily, the company played down the significance of the gum strip. "It's not included in the US Motor Vehicle Safety Standards nor in our contract with FTS," Shen Jinrong, chairman of the Hangzhou Zhongce board of directors, was quoted as saying. Ma Liangqing, director of China's National Center for Tire Quality Inspection and Supervision, said the strip should not be used as a safety measurement, according to the newspaper. "Whether to have it, or how thick the strip is, are technical issues. The designs vary in different companies," Ma was quoted as saying. "The key is whether the finished products are up to standard." |
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