China's State Administration for Industry and Commerce (SAIC) said on Friday it had uncovered 10.8 million cases of economic violations and crimes over the past five years.

The cases were worth 170.5 billion yuan (24.1 billion U.S. dollars).

Among the total, 8.3 billion yuan involved 630,000 cases related to the production and sales of fake and low quality goods, the SAIC said on the eve of the World Consumer Rights Day this Saturday.

The SAIC also uncovered 796,100 cases of consumer rights violations valued at 4.8 billion yuan. It successfully mediated 3.39 million of the 3.76 million consumer complaints it received, helping to retrieve economic losses of 3.5 billion yuan for consumers.

To protect consumer safety and their legitimate rights, the SAIC has launched food safety checkups and crackdowns on false and illegal advertising, pyramid selling, trademark violations and commercial fraud. It pledged to strengthen food and product safety monitoring and check-up efforts in future.

(Xinhua News Agency March 14, 2008)