The Chinese government has sponsored 14 training courses for toy makers on product quality and safety since August, sources at the Ministry of Commerce said on Friday.

The organizers of the courses included the Ministry of Commerce, General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine and related local authorities of Guangdong, Jiangsu and Anhui provinces. Trainees, numbering more than 2,600, came from 1,800-plus Chinese toy manufacturing enterprises, or one fifth of the country's total.

From Oct. 11 to 12, the ministry and the general administration jointly held two training courses in Dongguan and Shenzhen, in southern China's Guangdong Province, as the Chinese government's latest efforts to improve toy makers' quality awareness.

During the two courses, experts in toy tests and certification and professionals from world famous toy providers, including Mattel from the United States, explained licensing systems relating to the quality of toy exports, test laws and policies and related rules and criteria for toys in major European and American markets. They also taught the more than 1,000 trainees for the two courses to avoid using excess lead in toys and designing defects in small spare parts.

The sources said more similar training courses would be provided for better quality of exports. Related teaching materials will be available on one of the websites of the Ministry of Commerce, the sources added.

China has been in the spotlight amid a spate of export recalls, the recent one by the U.S. toy maker Mattel, which this summer staged three separate recalls of Chinese-made products, 87 percent of which were found to have loose magnets -- a design defect by Mattel itself -- and 13 percent of which contained excessive lead.

As the world's largest toy manufacturer, China exported 22 billion toys last year, about 60 percent of the world's total. To improve product safety, the nation's quality watchdog introduced the nation's landmark recall systems for unsafe food products and toys in late August this year.

Meanwhile, the Chinese government has also launched a four-month nationwide campaign to improve the quality of goods and food safety, targeting farm produce, processed food, the catering sector, drugs, pork, imported and exported goods and products closely linked to human health and safety.

(Xinhua News Agency October 20, 2007)