Ahead of impending cabinet-level talks between China and the United States likely to be dominated by fears of substandard Chinese-made products, the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Mike Leavitt today in a conciliatory tone said the issue at hand was one of improving the monitoring of imports,

Our message to China, as well as to every other import/export partner we have, is if you desire to produce goods for the American consumer, you need to meet American standards of quality. We want you to know what they are, and we'll work with you to meet them.

The current emphasis on effective and sustained monitoring, resulting from the product quality and safety issues involving Chinese products in 2007, echo findings from KPMG's March 2007 Sourcing Survey (available here). Acclaiming sourcing, when managed well, as having evolved today to a key strategic business tool, the survey found 'significant opportunities' still exist for organizations to capitalize on the strategic value of sourcing;

this potential is often unlocked by more consistent measurements of contract provisions and other metrics about the relationship with service providers... This measurement process, while challenging, can be instrumental in protecting the bottom line (and) also helps consolidate the alignment of expectations among both customers and service providers, enhancing overall corporate governance and ensuring money is well spent.

In Asia Sentinel today John Berthelson looked at how the events of 2007 have impacted on sourcing companies in China. Numerous quality concerns have contributed to the development of a flourishing quality-testing industry, and with such vast amounts of products flowing out of China, Chinese producers have come under ever-increasing scrutiny. Yet the companies in the first line of fire here are the sourcing companies who constantly and vigilantly need to ensure factory owners are delivering on what they promised. Hence sourcing companies are constantly engaged in monitoring and testing, not only when products are made but also when they are transported. Speaking of logistics, in today's macro-growth China forecast the organiser of the Asian International Transport and Logistics Exhibition stated in Beijing that the value of China's logistics industry rose 12.1% over last year and is expected to grow 20% annually, reaching 1.2 trillion RMB in 2010.