In 2024, the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) organized national product quality supervision inspections for 147 categories of products. The main findings are summarized as follows:
I. Overall Situation
A total of 25,250 product batches from 23,764 production and business entities were inspected. Among these, 3,601 batches from 3,437 companies were found to be non-compliant, resulting in a national product inspection failure rate of 14.3%.
II. Regional Distribution of Inspections
The inspection covered all 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) in China. Guangdong had the highest number of inspected batches, accounting for 26.3% of the total, followed by Zhejiang (16.9%), Jiangsu (9.7%), Hebei (6.0%), and Shandong (5.2%). The regional distribution closely reflects China’s industrial cluster layout: eastern regions accounted for 77.9% of inspections, central regions 13.9%, and western regions 8.2%.
III. Quality by Enterprise Size
By enterprise size: large enterprises made up 2.2%, medium 4.6%, and small enterprises 93.2% of total inspected enterprises. The proportion of small enterprises increased by 0.2 percentage points from the previous year. Non-compliance rates were 2.5% for large, 4.5% for medium, and 15.2% for small enterprises. Quality remains a concern particularly among small enterprises.
IV. Field of Sampling
Manufacturing field: 9,898 batches (39.2% of total), 6.7% failure rate
Physical retail (offline): 8,055 batches (31.9%), 15.1% failure rate
E-commerce: 7,297 batches (28.9%), 23.5% failure rate
Failure rate in e-commerce rose by 1.8 percentage points compared to last year. Manufacturing remains the most compliant field.
V. Distribution of Product Failure Rates
9 product categories (e.g., humidifiers, lithium drills, toilet chairs, lifebuoys, servers, automobile tires, hot-rolled steel sections, disposable plastic tableware, and tea packaging) had a 0% failure rate.
53 categories (e.g., gas hose connectors, dry powder extinguishers, toys) had failure rates under 10%.
46 categories (e.g., cashmere sweaters, agricultural films, fireworks) had failure rates between 10–20%.
39 categories (e.g., electronic locks, phosphate fertilizer, children’s shoes) had failure rates above 20%.
VI. Handling of Results
Inspection results have been made publicly available on the SAMR website. Non-compliant manufacturers and sellers were dealt with as follows:
Immediate cessation of production and sale of the same product type.
Ordered corrective actions with follow-up inspections.
Legal action against violations and referral of criminal cases to judicial authorities.
VII. Next Steps
SAMR will continue to enhance targeted supervision based on risk and public concern, especially for products related to personal safety and those sold via live-streaming platforms. Products with high failure rates will face follow-up inspections and targeted rectification efforts in regions with concentrated complaints and common quality issues. SAMR aims to ensure defective products do not reach the market, strictly punish quality violations, reinforce enterprise accountability, and promote high-quality economic and social development.