China must learn from Toyota's mistakes

"Quality defects often emerge a long time after the vehicle has been in use, but Chinese-branded vehicles have only been in the market for a short time. Moreover, as recalls have a serious impact on brands, the still-young domestic automakers deal with quality problems through their after-sales service, rather than recalling them," said Tan.

The Toyota logo on a car covered in snow in Beijing. This winter is really  cold for the Japanese automaker who saw one disaster after another in its  product quality and after-sales services. [CFP]

However, Luo Lei, vice-secretary of China Automobile Dealers Association, attributed the rare occasions of recall from domestic automakers to an imperfect automobile quality supervision system in China.

"Whether it's the US, European countries or Japan, faulty vehicles are under strict supervision and restrictions from the governments by related laws but, in China, we only have a recall regulation, rather than a law, with which to deal with auto manufacturers," said Luo. "Without authoritative legislation, no enterprises are willing to initiate recalls."

In 1966, the US government legislated for the recall of defective vehicles. Japan began to implement a vehicle recall system in 1969 and included it in its auto industry laws in 1994.

However, China only started to pay attention to vehicle quality issues in October, 2004, by launching a vehicle recall regulation.

According to statistics from the national quality watchdog - the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine - over the past five years it received 212 active recall applications from almost 60 automakers, involving 3.21 million defective vehicles in total. Only seven among the 212 recalls were from Chinese automakers. This compares with the recall of 3.29 million vehicles in Japan in 2001 alone.