Chinese-made vinyl baby bibs should be pulled from store shelves because they may contain too much lead paint, an environmental group said Wednesday, in the latest allegation of shoddy manufacturing to hit the country.

The bibs, sold in Toys "R" Us stores in the U.S., have amounts of lead up to four times what the Environmental Protection Agency allows in paint, claimed the California-based Center for Environmental Health.

Toys "R" Us said earlier tests concluded the bibs had acceptable limits of lead, but is now testing the products again.

The environmental group bought four bibs in the San Francisco Bay-area and tested them at a private lab.

Earlier this week, Mattel Inc., the largest U.S. toy company, recalled millions more Chinese-made toys on Tuesday due to safety risks from lead paint and warned it may recall additional products as it steps up testing.

More than 80 per cent of the world's toys are manufactured in China, and many are from small producers that are resistant to regulation. They make cheap plastic, metal and wooden toys that often have a lead content well above internationally accepted limits and even above limits set by the Chinese government.

Lead is often added to paint to make colours brighter. But it's also well known to cause damage to the nervous and reproductive systems and lead to brain damage and birth defects.

China has joined developed countries in tightening controls on lead, but the rules are difficult to enforce in a society with a thriving underground industry producing substandard goods. And low-level authorities often are reluctant to force changes that might hurt local companies.

With the recent recall of Chinese-made toothpaste, pet foods and tires, the country is gaining a reputation for goods that are shoddy and hazardous.

"It does hurt the made-in-China label in the short term, definitely," says journalist James McGregor, author of One Billion Customers.

"Whether it hurts the made-in-China label in the long term is up to China and cleaning up their act and being transparent."

But the authoritarian-run Chinese government is not known for its transparency, and on state television, there has not been a mention of one of the world's largest toy recalls.

For Chinese parents, worries about lead competes with worries about the many other toxins in the heavily polluted country. While the country has phased out leaded gasoline, house paint, old pipes and buildings and factories are still big sources of lead and poisonings are frequent.

Last year, 877 villagers near a lead smelter in the northwest's Gansu province, including 334 children under 14, suffered lead poisoning, according to state media. The smelter's owners later admitted they ran it at night with its pollution-control gear turned off to save money, news reports said.

A study of 5,000 children in Dongguan, a boomtown near Hong Kong, found that 22.1 per cent had lead in their blood in excess of safe levels, according to the newspaper Yangcheng Evening News.

Still, analysts say the blame doesn't lie only with Chinese manufacturers. They point to major foreign buyers that are demanding lower and lower prices, forcing Chinese factories to cut corners.

China is undergoing its industrial revolution, and that means many regulatory bodies are simply not yet up to standard or even non-existent. They are receiving help from the American FDA and European Union to build such regulations, but it will take time.

At the same time, factory owners are having to increase wages due to a labour shortage spurred by China's one-child policy.

"If they were transparent about the pressure their factory owners are under to cut prices, if they're transparent about how they have a lot of poor people, and how this is a developing country that is just getting its regulatory system together, people would be sympathetic," believes McGregor.

How quickly the made-in-China label recovers depends in large part on China's honesty with the world. But with the Olympics less than a year away, the image-conscious nation may find it hard to admit its weaknesses.

With a report from Steve Chao, CTV Beijing Bureau Chief