The rapid expansion of the Chinese auto manufacturing industry has become a concern for the Chinese government, especially after the latest episodes with Japanese automaker Toyota, whose CEO has admitted to the world that the company’s fast growth damaged the safety and quality of its vehicles, leading to thousands of recalls worldwide and consequent loss of revenues in the near future.

In China, the auto industry made 1.61 million units and sold 1.66 million in January alone, a whopping 143 percent and 124 percent increase respectively over the same month last year, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).

“China and the automobile industry should learn a lesson from this [Toyota recalls] incident, and at the same time, associations are carefully studying the lessons of this incident and will make recommendations to enterprises within the industry to promote a healthy development of China’s automobile industry,” CAAM notes in a statement.

Voicing these concerns, China’s Ministry of Information and Technology (MIIT) issued a guideline in March urging the country’s automakers to develop procedures to improve their quality management processes, according to the online news source, China View. “The MIIT warned auto production enterprises against blind expansion, urging them to focus more on technology upgrade and to improve product quality by using ‘new technology, new techniques, new equipment, and new materials.”

In addition, car manufacturers were asked to improve after-sale service by “setting up an accountability mechanism to timely recall and deal with the faulty products,” China View reports.

In March of this year, according to a statement issued by the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ ) of China, a guideline of quality-enhancing initiatives was issued to quality inspection agencies nationwide that had the following goals:

• Strive to effectively help promote stable and rapid economic development

• Implement scientific supervision and administration to prevent regional and major quality and safety incidents from occurring

• Make efforts to enhance fundamental assurance and local-level administration to improve the overall capabilities of all quality inspection agencies in performing their functions

• Efforts shall be exerted to help businesses assume the primary responsibility in ensuring quality and safety, to urge government departments at all levels to strengthen leadership in quality management, to help industrial organizations provide greater support, more guidance and better services, and to enhance various sectors’ sense of quality.

• The ultimate goal is to raise China’s product quality to a new level.

To ensure the progress of the initiatives, the AQSIQ set up a leading group, under which there is an executing office. AQSIQ minister, Wang Yong, is the leader of the leading group.

The overall objective, as stated in the annex of the guidelines, is to put forward 35 programs to specify relevant contents and measures to be taken by major undertakers and participating departments and implement these programs by the end of this year.