China has sold nearly four billion masks to foreign countries since March, officials said Sunday, as they tried to stem widespread fears over the quality of medical exports.
Despite Chinese cases dwindling, Beijing has encouragedfactories to increase production of medical supplies as the pandemic kills over60,000 globally and parts of the world face a protective equipment shortage.
China has exported 3.86 billion masks, 37.5 million piecesof protective clothing, 16,000 ventilators and 2.84 million COVID-19 testingkits since March 1, customs official Jin Hai said, with orders to more than 50countries.
She added the country’s medical supply exports were valuedat 10.2 billion yuan ($1.4 billion).
However numerous nations — including the Netherlands, thePhilippines, Croatia, Turkey and Spain — have complained about substandard orfaulty medical products shipped from China.
Last week, the Dutch government recalled 600,000 masks outof a Chinese shipment of 1.3 million that did not meet quality standards. Chinasaid the manufacturer “stated clearly that (the masks) arenon-surgical.” Spain also rejected thousands of rapid test kits sent by anunauthorised Chinese company after it found that they were unreliable lastweek.
Chinese officials hit back on Sunday at media reports overdefective medical supplies, saying that they “did not reflect the fullfacts”.
“In reality there are various factors, such as Chinahaving different standards and different usage habits to other countries. Evenimproper use can lead to doubts over quality,” said Jiang Fan, an officialwith the Ministry of Commerce.
The comments echoed remarks from Foreign Ministryspokeswoman Hua Chunying, who over the past week has repeatedly urged Westernmedia not to “politicise” or “hype up” the issue.
Earlier this week, Beijing tightened regulations forexported coronavirus medical equipment, requiring products to fulfil bothdomestic licensing standards and that of their destination countries.China has also increased its production capacityof COVID-19 testing kits to over 4 million a day, said Zhang Qi, an officialwith the National Medical Products Administration.