China's drug watchdog on Wednesday promised to tighten supervision over exported drugs and medical devices.

"We can see that weaknesses exist in the supervision of exports of drugs and medical devices," said Yan Jiangying, spokeswoman of the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) at a regular press conference hold in Beijing on Wednesday.

China mostly depends on importing countries to examine Chinese medicine and medical devices according to their own standards.

But things will change, Yan said, adding that the SFDA is working hard on detailed rules to ensure high quality of drug exports after the State Council issued special regulations on the safety supervision and administration of food and other products.

The regulation, issued on July 26, is aimed at intensifying the control over producers and distributors of food, drug, medical devices and other products related to human health.

The SFDA's set of rules will be a follow-up to the regulation, Yan said.

Several detailed policies have been set in the regulation. Inspection and quarantine authorities, as well as commercial and drug supervisors, are required to establish positive and negative records for Chinese exporters and submit the records to the media regularly.

Exporters who provide fake quality certificates or evade quality and quarantine inspections will be fined three times the product's value and if the supervisors fail to work, the chief officials of the department will be punished, according to the regulation.

Yan emphasized the item on recalling products of bad quality.

The regulation asked manufacturers to recall its exported products once they were found to be unqualified.

"This policy will be strictly implemented," she said.

(Xinhua News Agency August 9, 2007)