China has flagged 81 imported children’s clothing products from H&M, Zara, and Nike for quality and safety risks, media Newsweek reports. The warning note was recently published by the General Administration of Customs in China through their website.
The General Administration of Customs in China has between June last year and May this year found nine batches of woven cotton girls’ dresses from the Swedish retailer H&M to contain dyes or other substances which could be harmful to children. According to customs, the dye or harmful substances could be ingested or absorbed through the skin. In addition, officials identified the same concerns in a cotton-knit boys t-shirt from Nike and in a set of children’s pajamas and a pair of cotton-knit baby shorts from Zara.
According to reports made by the South China Morning Post, authorities have said that the non-compliant products have all been confiscated, destroyed, or returned to their distributors.
The warning can be seen as the latest blow from China to global brands that recently faced a broad boycott in the country because they refused to use cotton grown in China’s Xinjiang province. Some brands have lost a lot of support in China and the new custom warning is being hailed as another reason to shop for domestic products.
Wei Qian, the father of a two-year-old boy, said to the South China Morning Post, “For me, brands like Nike, Adidas, H&M, and Uniqlo no longer exist. I have gradually increased the ratio of domestic products in my cart even before the Xinjiang cotton controversy.”
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