Consumer environment
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World Consumer Rights Day, which this year fell on Tuesday, has long been an occasion for consumers to learn from the media how they can avoid being cheated or ripped off.
Actually, consumers expect the State watchdogs such as the State Administration of Industry and Commerce (SAIC) to better protect them.
The SAIC released its five-year plan for the protection of consumers' right this week. In the plan, it promised that it would intensify regular checks on foods and other consumer goods before they are sold in the market.
We hope the SAIC means what it says and its efforts will constitute a protective wall to keep goods of inferior quality from entering the market.
The number of petitions the SAIC received from consumers soared to 754,000 last year, 27,000 more than the year before last. The figures for consumer-related cases provided by a court in Beijing show that the number of such cases has increased by 23 percent year-on-year over the past six years.
It is not surprising that so many consumers get ripped off considering the unfair stipulations made by sellers to protect their own interests and the tactics used by sellers to trick consumers into paying more for a particular good or service.
What makes the situation worse is that some food sellers resort to potentially health-threatening ploys - using harmful dyes or poisonous elements - to take advantage of consumers' natural desire to purchase high quality for less. Some food makers even add industrial materials to the foods they sell to make them look or taste good.
It is essential for China to improve its consumer environment when transferring its growth driver to domestic consumption.
It is far from enough for the watchdogs such as the SAIC and the State Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine to just deal with specific cases and tell consumers how to tell fake goods from real ones and how to tell whether food has been contaminated or not.
To ease consumers' fears, the Criminal Law was amended in February with severer penalties for crimes involving food safety. According to the new law, anyone who commits a food safety crime will be sentenced to imprisonment for at least five years.
We hope that the law will be executed to the letter and bring to justice all those who intentionally adulterate the foods or goods they sell in order to make handsome profits.
Only effective preventive measures, along with severe penalties that deter potential offenders, will create a favorable environment for consumption.
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