August 14, 2007
Chinese Toy Company CEO Commits Suicide
NEW UPDATE(11:11am, est) Mattel just recalled 9 million toys. Read about it here.
From CNN
BEIJING, China (AP) -- The head of a Chinese manufacturer whose lead-tainted Sesame Street toys were the center of a massive U.S. recall has killed himself, a state-run newspaper said Monday.Two toys of the same kind recalled by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Cheung Shu-hung, who co-owned Lee Der Industrial Co., committed suicide at a warehouse over the weekend, apparently by hanging himself, the Southern Metropolis Daily reported.
"When I rushed there around 5 p.m., police had already sealed off the area," the newspaper quoted a manager surnamed Liu as saying. "I saw that our boss had two deep marks in his neck."
Though the report did not give a reason for Cheung's apparent suicide -- and the company declined to discuss the matter -- Lee Der was under pressure in a global controversy over the safety of Chinese made products. It is common for disgraced officials to commit suicide in China.
This month, Mattel Inc., one of the largest U.S. toy companies, was forced to recall 967,000 plastic preschool toys made by Lee Der because they were decorated with paint found to have excessive amounts of lead. The toys, sold in the U.S. under the Fisher-Price brand, included likenesses of Big Bird and Elmo, as well as the Dora and Diego characters.
I wonder if the Chinese government had made plans to execute this guy like they did the official who took bribes and allowed tainted medicine to be exported to the US? This is wild.
Posted by anthony at August 14, 2007 08:57 AM | TrackBackThe phrase "excessive amounts of lead" floors me. Exactly what is the "acceptable" amount of lead in a children's toy? The very fact that someone chose to speak about "excessive" amounts of lead in paint intended for children's toys indicates that there is something very wrong with Mattel's supplier quality.
Posted by: Robert Perry at August 14, 2007 12:06 PMGood point.
Posted by: Anthony at August 14, 2007 03:51 PMRobert, I think there's a certain amount of lead in everything. "Excessive" is probably any amount over what would be encountered naturally.
Odds are, the only thing this guy did wrong was get caught. If the Chinese gvt had plans to execute him (which it probably did), it was most likely for getting caught. How many of these incidents will it take before we realize that it isn't safe to trade with a communist super-power regardless of how "Western" a face they put on things. And you have to wonder what's in the products they sell to their own people....
Posted by: dramaturge at August 15, 2007 06:43 PMYou're right, dramaturge, but the reality here is not that it was 5% above the threshold. It was flat out lead based paint, hundreds or thousands of times higher in lead concentration than any sane exposure threshold.
Now the more recent case with lead in PVC items is an issue of thresholds; lead is legitimately used there to soften it for use. That doesn't apply for paint anymore, though.
Posted by: Robert Perry at August 16, 2007 01:35 PMGotcha. So it's really a semantics thing, then. "Above acceptable levels" is soft-pedaling to keep people from freaking out. And make it sound like they have their Chinese plants under control. I think the whole thing is disturbing. And, like I say, should be causing us to move away from things made in Red China.
Posted by: dramaturge at August 16, 2007 07:16 PMDramaturge, that could be the issue for sure. I was more thinking that "they didn't know any better" rather than "they were deliberately hiding the truth."
I don't know, now that I think about it, which ought to scare me more.
Posted by: Robert Perry at August 17, 2007 04:02 PM